25 March 2021- On the face of it, Danisco Animal Nutrition’s upcoming launch of its dairy probiotic Omni-Bos P169 and calf probiotic Omni-Bos CB in Egypt and Jordan might appear to concern mainly the Middle East’s cattle producers.
However, an astute observer of the industry might be intrigued by this move. Danisco Animal Nutrition, now part of IFF, had long been a prominent player in poultry and swine gut health under DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences, but the cattle portfolio has traditionally been more discreet.
According to Dawn Overby, Global Segment Manager for Ruminants at Danisco Animal Nutrition, this is about to change. “We are putting more resources into focusing on ruminants,” she says. “We view this as the first of many steps to fulfil [our commitment to this market], including launching current products in additional countries as well as a pipeline of new products to meet challenges of our customers.”
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In the case of the two Omni-Bos products, Danisco Animal Nutrition’s current objective is to enable these highly-effective, low-profile solutions to reach cattle farmers who could benefit from them. After all, they have been deployed successfully in major cattle-producing nations such as the US or Australia, in some cases for over 10 years now. “It’s a really solid product [line]. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re starting to launch it in more countries now, and we’re more set up now [from a commercial standpoint] to move into this space,” says Overby. As she explains, Omni-Bos P169 is a unique, patented strain of Propionibacterium, a natural inhabitant of the rumen, whose special talent is the production of propionate, one of the most energy-dense compounds in the rumen, at around 109% that of glucose, a more commonly-known energy compound. |
Dawn Overby |
“When ruminal propionate is converted to glucose in the liver, that improves the available energy that the dairy cow has to do everything that it needs to do. Research has shown that increasing the proportion of proprionibacteria in the rumen microbiome can improve the production of ruminal propionate and that can then improve the potential energy balance of the cow,” she asserts.
For a dairy producer, this can be an invaluable tool in the constant battle against negative energy balance during the critical transition period after calving and through peak lactation; in the field, Danisco claims, cows on Omni-Bos P169 have had on average an increase of over 2 kg per day in fat corrected milk.
“When negative energy balance occurs, and when it is increasing, there are several challenges that the dairy cow could fall to, including a reduction in the milk production, a reduction in the milk quality, reproductive issues, or even cow health [issues] because the immune system is affected [when the cow is under stress].”
Meanwhile, Omni-Bos CB is based around three different Bacillus amylioliquefaciens strains selected to give the calf the best protection against scours during their most fragile period.
The stakes are high: “During the first 45 to 50 days of life, calves are working with a suppressed immune system, it’s not mature yet. So, the calf is more susceptible from challenges due to high levels of bad bacteria like Clostridium perfringens and E. coli. One source, the US Animal Health Monitoring System in their 2014 Dairy Health Report*, shows that about 56 % of preweaned heifer deaths were associated with diarrhea or other digestive problems. With the use of Omni-Bos CB, producers have observed an improvement of over 25% in the number of health calves, leading to a 6% improvement in average daily gain.”
Beyond their ability to combat the more problematic pathogens causing scours, the specific strains in Omni-Bos CB also have the advantage of being particularly heat-resistant thanks to their spore-forming ability. “By having a really stable product that can be heated, can be put into different products that are fed to the calves, that just makes it so much easier for the farmer to adopt and to use.”
Indeed, it is fair to say that at the heart of both product’s efficacy is a careful attention to strain selection in order to find the best product for a particular use, rather than a generic cross-species probiotic.
“This is how we approach our pipeline and bring solutions to market…we looked at it through the lens of a specific customer problem, and went through a selection process where we selected from our large library of pro-enteric probiotic candidates,” explains Overby. “Danisco Animal Nutrition, now part of IFF, have a huge library of probiotics…we have collected a lot of strains from our microbiome approach for developing solutions for the animal production industry.”
These assets are essential to maintaining a robust product pipeline; Overby claims the company is “looking to address many of the top challenges in ruminants” thanks to this approach. However, she stresses, IFF’s deep expertise in microbial populations is not just about filling the new product pipeline; it is also about answering questions which help producers understand and have confidence in the solutions they are feeding to their animals.
“We’re a science company; we do extensive in vitro and in vivo work to understand challenges, carry out the selection process, and understand the mode of action of what we want to bring to market,” she argues. “The question of how does [a specific] probiotic work can, we know, be a little bit of a black box, so having science and mode of action data—not just the results, but how it works—and leveraging that scientific understanding to bring to our customers is a really important part of how we bring the products to market.”
Omni-Bos P169 and Omni-Bos CB will be available in Egypt and Jordan soon, pending the conclusion of administrative approvals. More information on the status of these products is available through a local Danisco Animal Nutrition representative.
Published in association with Danisco Animal Nutrition
* USDA APHIS National Animal Health Monitoring System, 2018. Health and Management Practices on U.S. Dairy Operations, 2014. Dairy 2014. p.36. Available at: <https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/nahms/dairy/downloads/dairy14/Dairy14_dr_PartIII.pdf>
