Tackling Crypto outbreaks

Cecil and Joel have had issues on farm in the past with Cryptosporidium in young calves and have been using Encrypt to counteract this problem, so last week Chris Mollan of Mervue Laboratories and Adam Black of Farmline, Dromara called out to see how they were getting on.

Joel explains how the problems arose at first. “Around three years ago we started having problems with our calves where the calves around a week old started getting scour, becoming dehydrated and going down fast. When we saw that the standard scour procedure wasn’t working for them and we had lost some calves we knew it was something more serious so we got our local vet out to have a look. We sent the deceased calves off to the lab for tests and also had our vet carry out scour tests.”

Joel continued: “When the results came back we could see that our problem was Cryptosporidium. With these results we started the calves on a well-known product widely used against Crypto. After some time we could see that the calves were still struggling to fight against it and we were still losing some calves so I mentioned it to Alan Strain and Adam Black when I was in Farmline to see if they could help. With both Alan and Adam being qualified animal medicine advisors I knew that they would have the knowledge to try and help us with this issue.”

Farmline in Dromara, Co Down have had great feedback with Encrypt on many of their customers’ farms and so Adam introduced the Mervue Laboratories product - Encrypt - to Cecil and Joel. Adam explained the theory behind the product saying: “Encrypt is made up of activated clays. Activated clays are known to absorb bacteria and protozoa toxins thus protecting the gut wall from losing essential nutrients required to support calf health and performance.

So the activated clays can effectively absorb the Cryptosporidium oocysts and toxins released from the Crypto oocysts and excrete them through the dung. In addition to activated Clays, Encrypt contains a specially selected combination of Natural Herbs, Spices and Essential Oils which penetrate the outer cell wall of the Protozoa. This supports neutralizing the harmful effects of the Crypto Oocysts and naturally supports Calves recovering from the effects of Cryptosporidium.”

Cecil and Joel stopped the calves on their current procedure and started to use Encrypt in its place. Joel explained how they used the Encrypt.

“We used Encrypt as a preventative and administered it at 60ml once a day for a week. For the calves, which were already scouring, we gave them 60ml twice a day for four days. Within a few days, we could see a big difference already as the calves scour had dried up, they were up on their feet, back full of energy and eager to drink. From when we started using Encrypt we haven’t lost a single calf since.”

Encrypt is available from a wide range of agricultural merchants across Northern Ireland. For any more information on Encrypt, please contact Chris on 07739061672 or Robert on 07770775212.