The unavailability or excessive price of wheat starch products is driving pig farmers with liquid feeders to alternatives. Pre-baked fries are a tasty source of energy, but very difficult to get homogeneous in the ration. Math and Willem Egelmeers found the solution for this. 'BioAktiv Liquid Feed Booster to the mix of fries and water has an immediate effect.'
Several BioAktiv products have been developed for the pig industry. By mixing the products into dry or liquid feed or adding them to drinking water, several benefits can be achieved. 'Total digestion is better,' says Jos Hendriks. 'This is also reflected in the smoother manure and noticeable in the fresher barn climate. Several of our tests show that ammonia emissions seem to be dozens of percent lower. That effect can also be seen in the higher nitrogen levels in the slurry,' the TopTurn owner explains.
The search for an additive to make a by-product more pumpable put Willem Egelmeers, a fattening pig farmer in Wanroij and pig consultant at Agrifirm, on the trail of TopTurn Special Products. 'We are doing tests with Liquid Feed Booster on a small scale to make the added value visible. When my brother Matt knocked on the door asking how he could get a mix of pre-fried fries with water homogeneous in the ration, the line to TopTurn owner Jos Hendriks was quickly established.' Still, Math Egelmeers, a meat pig farmer in the same Brabant town as his brother, confesses to having been reluctant at first to use such an additive. 'I am down-to-earth and want to see with my own eyes whether something works or not. But the Internet search and the videos with user experiences of the additive for homogeneous manure quality made me very curious.'
The brothers called Hendriks and presented their dilemma. Because of the high price and poor availability of wheat starch products, Math Egelmeers wanted to switch to the energy source pre-fried fries
'The fat- and starch-rich potato by-product is something pigs find tasty and they grow fast from it.' 'To best incorporate the fries into the ration, it had to be mixed long and intensively with expensive wheat starch in a pre-mixer,' explains Willem Egelmeers. 'The pumpability and sagging of the premix were also not optimal. So we wanted a solution to optimally mix French fries with water into a homogeneous and easily pumpable porridge with the highest possible dry matter content. Quality, in other words. The time factor is less important to us because we have sufficient capacity with two 60-ton premixers and with batch work we keep feed hygiene optimal.'
Because Hendriks had already picked up such a question in practice and anticipated that more pig farmers would come up with it, he had already alerted the research department at BioAktiv in Germany. They developed a specific additive to get a high-fat product and water mixed quickly and well.
'In just 15 minutes, the effect of BioAktiv Liquid Feed Booster is already visible'
Product development and gaining sufficient testing experience takes 1.5 to 2 years, according to Hendriks, and everything was just in the final stages. 'The new BioAktiv product treated under bioresonance technology has molasses as a carrier,' explains the owner of GMP+-certified TopTurn. 'So Matt Egelmeers called at just the right time to experience BioAktiv Liquid Feed Booster in practice.' With a 5-liter package of the new additive, Hendriks went to see the situation at Egelmeers. The two pre-mixers with powerful agitators could distribute the liquid product just fine in the mix of water and French fries. Matt Egelmeers: 'His story of equalized frequencies and loads is hard to grasp, as long as the additive does what it promises.'
The jerry can of BioAktiv Liquid Feed Booster should be enough to treat 100 tons of fry water mix. The Egelmeers brothers started by mixing 20 tons of fries with a dry matter content of about 36 percent, 15 cubic meters of water and the booster. 'It's almost unbelievable, but after 15 minutes we already saw the mix turn into porridge of about 18 percent dry matter,' The tone was set and they enthusiastically continued optimizing the ration. 'We have a relatively large amount of return water which has to be incorporated into the next feeding process. That's why I strive for a premix with the highest possible dry matter content,' Math Egelmeers says. 'Thanks to BioAktiv Liquid Feed Booster, I can now mix 32 tons of pre-mixed fries with 25 cubic meters of water into a homogeneous and perfectly pumpable porridge with 22 percent dry matter.' 'The stable premix also affects the constancy of the ration composition,' adds Willem Egelmeers. 'The pigs take the porridge that doesn't sag just fine and have started to grow faster.' The brothers say they are meticulous about storing BioAktiv Liquid Feed Booster. 'We put the jerry cans in a place where there are no magnetic fields. It would be a shame to ruin the performance of such an effective product.'
