As featured in All About Feed: Mon 03 November 2014

Neonate nutrition is gaining more interest. Why is that?

For three reasons.

1. Total lifetime performance.

There is a growing body of research evidence across animal species that has identified that the neonate phase in an animal's life can have a significant effect on the animal's total life performance – for good or bad. This includes performance changes such as growth rate, feed conversion and milk production all of which have financial implications. As an industry we are trying to get 'more from less' and neonates present a real opportunity for raising an animal's performance for the rest of its life, helping us all as food producers to achieve greater performance than has been achieved before. Our own research in one particular area of neonate nutrition has led to some exceptional discoveries in whole life performance.

2. Hyperprolific pig litters.

Breeding performance in pigs is leading to the production of more vulnerable neonates which need more inputs to prevent increases in mortality. We see increasing litter sizes with pigs associated with lower birth weights and higher mortality. Neonatal nutrition can help to reverse these pressures and trends in mortality.

3. Antibiotic usage

We should also not forget that as we seek to reduce antibiotic usage we have less in our armoury for supporting the neonate. Neonatal nutrition will help us to step in and fill the gap reducing our need for antibiotic usage.

Is neonate nutrition only targeting the first few days of the animal's life. Does this differ between swine and ruminants?

The dictionary definition of a neonate is a newborn animal (typically a mammal), especially one less than 4 weeks old. AB Neo is just as interested in the first few days and weeks of an animal's life as being formative for the rest of its life as we are prior to the animal being born, and even in the run up to conception. We are looking at all of these stages of development as opportunities to switch on lifetime performance and so are interested in the maternal influences on the neonate and its lifetime performance. Our work with both swine and ruminants has shown that the earlier the neonate is fed particular diets, the more significant the outcome. Wider pig work clearly shows nutritional influences on the neonate around conception, at points during the pregnancy as well as shortly pre and post birth.

Why is it economically interesting to invest in neonate nutrition?

Neonate nutrition is very much about making an investment to achieve greater than normal returns later. There are many variables that control the growth and performance of an animal through its life, but if the neonate phase is underutilised then the opportunity for switching on lifetime performance has been lost - and thereafter the animal will be developing on a lower plane of growth or less efficiently.

When seeking to maximise animal performance, it's critical to optimise the neonate phase so as to deliver greater returns. It's all about increased incomes from such things as reaching slaughter sooner or heavier or more milk production.

Young animal feed is often expensive. What is your message to farmers and end users?

The neonate presents us with a short window within which we can switch on its lifetime performance. Interestingly, the period of investment in the neonate is when animals are eating relatively small quantities of food, making the actual investment relative to the costs through the rest of the animal's life very small. But if that investment is not made, the opportunities for developing similar levels of performance have been lost forever for that animal's lifetime. It's about investing wisely and at the right time.

It can be likened to Formula 1 racing. So much effort goes into getting into pole position through qualifying laps. Each team works so hard before the race start in the best possible position. So many farmers just expect their piglets or calves to perform well after weaning. This is not the case and so neonatal nutrition is all about getting livestock into pole position and not leaving anything to chance.

Do you think farmers and nutritionists do sufficient for neonates?

The effort shown in the neonate phase is a reflection on the increasing level of understanding and belief in the neonate being the formative stage for an animal's lifetime performance. Research is showing what can be achieved when we intervene in neonates and we will see farmers and nutritionists starting to show a greater focus on this area of lifetime opportunity, as we drive for greater performance. As the trends of lower antibiotic use and increasingly smaller more vulnerable neonates combine, much more will be demanded of neonatal nutrition.

Why has AB Agri decided to start the new business, solely focusing on neonate products?

AB Agri believes that innovation holds the key to helping to address the challenge of feeding a growing global population. It is therefore actively investing in a number of new areas - one of which is AB Neo - a brand new business that is focusing uniquely on neonates. AB Neo is based on the belief and understanding that neonates hold the key to switching on lifetime performance. By focusing on maternal and neonate stages in farm animals our aim is to develop breakthroughs that will give greater commercial advantages to farmers around the world. These advanced products will be easy to use and proven to switch on lifetime performance in neonates.

The products that you will first introduce are for pigs. You market these products as being accelerators. Can you explain why you use this term?

In pigs, over the past 20 years, the feed industry has made continuous and incremental improvements in post-weaning diets or starter feeds. It's amazing to see the progress we have made when we compare the performance of a leading starter feed from 20 years ago with a current leading starter feed formulation.

When considering the progress of pre-weaning or neonate diets over the same period, the industry has experienced frustrations and failures with limited success in delivering significant performance improvements. That is until the discovery of a novel nutritional breakthrough in neonates, where trials have confirmed that lifetime performance is improved more than can be accounted for by the nutrient levels and ingredients alone.

Conventionally, pig farmers have looked for an increase in feed intake and an increase in weaning weight as an indicator of progress in the area of neonate nutrition. By being obsessed with just feed intake, you could say we've been looking in the wrong place for 20 years.

After many years of trying to research ways of exploiting compensatory or catch up growth we have realised that it just cannot be done predictably in a commercial situation. This means the most profitable way of producing farm animals is through fast growth throughout their life. AB Neo has been developing and trialling a new category of neonate nutrition called 'Accelerators'. Accelerators are products that when offered to neonates, are proven to take animal performance to a higher trajectory than could be achieved using conventional best practice. As a result, they accelerate the performance of animals above their peers when offered at the neonate phase. Our first accelerator for pigs is called Axcelera-P where each piglet typically only consumes up to 200g from day 4 and through the first few weeks resulting in finishing pigs heavier or earlier.

With accelerators, pre-weaning feed intake is no longer the measure - it's about switching on and preparing the gut. The animal's gut is the delivery organ for feed efficiency and for a lean, fast growing animal - and Accelerators act by turning on the gut as the delivery system.

This may involve turning genes on or off to directly improve transporter systems directly or through the changed microbiota to open up high performing metabolic pathways. It's as though the switch has been turned on in the neonate to boost post weaning and lifetime performance.

With accelerators, little effect is seen until after the weaning phase, after which the performance is accelerated throughout the animal's whole life. This is an area of our ongoing research where we hope to define the precise mechanisms behind the positive lifetime impact.

A first accelerator for in dairy cows (Axcelera-C) is also being trialled, with significant improvements being achieved to date.

There is probably a lot of other businesses that produce neonate feed as well. What do you do to keep AB Neo as a leader in this category?

AB Neo's products are not really feed products but contain new non-feed know-how which makes them different to feed as we know it. AB Neo’s accelerators focus solely and uniquely on neonate nutrition that is proven to take animal performance to a higher level. There are many products produced by feed businesses around the world who produce conventional baby animal feeds that perform well. These may be produced as a wider portfolio of lifestage products, rather than focusing solely on the opportunity of neonate nutrition. Neonate nutrition is a growing area of research and influence on animal performance, and by focusing our R&D solely in this neonate area (hence our name - AB Neo), we believe we will be in a strong position to help farmers achieve their animals' true potential. If the neonate phase passes without the gut being switched on by an accelerator, then there's a limit to how that animal can perform in later life.

What are the research data telling you about your new products? Have they been tested on farms already?

Prior to the launch of AB Neo, a combination of academic trials and commercial trials have proven the concept of Axcelera-P. The data show that there are 3 fundamental benefits:

1. An improvement in lifetime performance - reaching slaughter 4 days earlier or 4kgs heavier.

2. Reduced pre-weaning mortality - proving to be very effective with hyperprolific sows.

3. Improved uniformity of pigs at weaning.

The reality of the research data is already borne out by many pig farms in UK already using the product. Having trialled it, they want to continue using it as they can see at first hand the commercial benefits. It is also being distributed to a growing number of European pig farmers who have also experienced the accelerator effect.

What products will be available through AB Neo?

The accelerator for pigs, Axcelera-P is already being used by pig farmers in UK and some parts of Europe. Due to the product's early performance in neonates, it has been readily adopted by innovative farmers even prior to being officially launched. Axcelera-C for calves is due to be launched in 2015 after completing the final round of university and farm trials, in addition to another new product for cows whose lifetime performance is being threatened by subclinical ketosis. When offered to a group of cows, only those in need of support select themselves and feed on the product, which is quite amazing to watch. Ketosis is an issue just prior to and post birth and so allowing cows to reduce it themselves supports the calf at a very vulnerable and formative period.

What is in the products? Enzymes? A combination of ingredients? What makes the product ideal for neonates? Digestibility, specific ingredients?

It's best not to think of Accelerators in terms of offering a better feed or a new diet. That is what makes them such a breakthrough. Accelerators have non-feed features in how they are produced. They use a proprietary formulation and a new production technology to activate specific ingredients that create a novel effect whose performance is greater than the ingredients.

What is the difference in developing a neonate feed product for monogastrics and ruminants?

The neonate of each species has different nutritional requirements, making the R&D and product development specific to each species. We don't anticipate there being any multi-species products although with some adaptation and reformulation, there may be species-specific versions based on similar technology - such as with Axcelera-P and Axcelera-C.

All new products will be research based and so we are active in neonatal research.

Will there be a lot more new products in the near future, for all animal species?

There are a number of products that are being developed currently for launch in 2015, initially across pig and ruminant species, including a product for lambs.

What do you predict in terms of growth for this new business? Are you targeting the whole EU?

As the global challenge for farmers is to deliver more from less, then our aim is to make these products available across the world either direct or through distributors. We already have local trials planned and under way in North America. Due to the novel technology and performance, Accelerators will offer feed manufacturers and product distributors significant strategic commercial advantages for the growing and developing their own business. These are very exciting times for AB Neo, our partners and the farming industry.

Paul Toplis - AB Neo's Swine Technical Director. BIO:

After graduating, Paul joined RHM Agriculture as an assistant nutritionist working on ruminant, pig and poultry nutrition. Paul was appointed National Pig Nutritionist in 1976 and after four years became RHM’s Chief Nutritionist. In 1982 Paul was appointed manager of the company’s centralised diet formulation department with responsibility for 15 feed mills manufacturing over 1 million tonnes of compound feed. In 1985 Paul moved into the premix industry where he increasingly specialised in commercial pig formulations and began regular export work.

In 1989 Paul joined SCA Nutrition with a remit to begin export activity. In 1994 SCA Nutrition were awarded the Queen’s award for Export Achievement (and remain the only livestock feed manufacturer to ever win this award). Paul left SCA in 1996 with three fellow directors to form Primary Diets where he served as Technical Director until late 2014.

Paul has been at the forefront of pig diet developments throughout his career of over 40 years in feed manufacture and has led breakthroughs in pig feeding from sow diets (1970’s/1980’s), grower/finisher diets (1980’s/1990’s) and in Piglet starter diets for the last 20 years. Paul is now dedicating his energy into neonatal nutrition, his last unchartered area of the pig's life as AB Neo's Technical Director for Swine.

Paul has and continues to serve of numerous industry committees and boards including; over twenty years on the Agricultural Industries Federation Legal Affairs and Scientific Committee and over thirty years on various AIC working parties, current member of both the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Board and NPA Allied Industry Committee and two recent terms on the Pig Veterinary Society Executive.

In 2011 Paul received the David Black award for outstanding and sustained contribution to the UK pig industry.

Paul has maintained an on farm advisory role throughout his career, both in the UK and overseas, and normally visits one or more pig units each week to help with problem solving or to give feeding recommendations.