A NEW holistic approach to animal health, has enabled a large poultry business to slash its antibiotic usage in the past two years.
During this time St David’s Poultry Team – one of the country’s leading poultry vets – has reduced its antibiotic use by a whopping 70% purely by relying more on natural remedies such as probiotics and essential oils.
Initially, new-born chicks were treated with probiotics to encourage healthy gut development across all of the firm’s 80 farms. Working with Faccenda Foods, all water supplies were analyised  with natural acids added to keep it as clean as possible.
A yeast extract was also introduced to the chicken feed to bind any ‘bad’ bacteria in the gut and reduce the risk of infection taking hold.
“We call this approach seed, weed and feed,” said Richard Turner, director of St David’s Poultry.
“We seed the gut with healthy bacteria using probiotics, weed out ‘bad’ bacteria and feed the ‘good’ bacteria with natural acids. The more healthy bacteria there are in the gut, the more competition there is against the bad ones which cause sickness.”
The protocols have proven such a success over the past five years that St David’s recently launched a new company – Applied Bacterial Control – to work with farmers to reduce antibiotic usage across all livestock sectors.
Regular vet visits mean farmers are able to act quickly should there be a health challenge, with an array of natural products available to get the birds back on track.
David Neilson, general manager for chicken agriculture at Faccenda. “We use essential oils, oregano and garlic: If the chickens get an upset tummy we use natural oils to help them recover, rather than going straight in with antibiotics.”
Faccenda has adopted a similar approach across its duck and turkey farms, and the wider industry has also been working to reduce antibiotic usage since 2011.
As a result, the industry slashed its antibiotic use by 44% between 2012 and 2015, while increasing production by 5%.