UK: New calf test wins top innovation award

ImmnuIGY Bovine IgG from Bimeda was awarded the Royal Dairy Innovation Award for the novel test, which is easy to conduct using a lancet and directly measures IgG levels using a lateral flow device in just 10 minutes.

Calves receiving insufficient, high-quality colostrum in the correct timeframe will suffer from Failure of Passive Transfer (FPT) and have been shown to be more susceptible to disease and poorer performance in terms of daily live weight gains.

The early identification of FPT and sub-optimal calves can:

• Allow feedback to supplying farms, enabling producers to make changes to management to reduce the risk of future failures of passive transfer.
• Allow the collection centres and rearers to risk rate and grade calves, identifying which are more robust and which are more susceptible to disease.
• Lead to specifically targeting calves based on the results of the test, with different management, focusing on calves that may be more susceptible to problems.
• Enable rewarding farms that supply calves with a high colostrum level with premiums.
• Lead to predicting the likely performance of each calf, based on a previously developed algorithm.
• Reassure rearers that they are receiving a healthy, thriving calf that has received the correct colostrum levels which may allow rearers to gain extra profits through increases efficiencies.

The simple on-farm test that can be administered by farmers themselves, and only requires a sample of 10μl of capillarised whole blood taken by lancet. After just 10 minutes of incubation, the lateral flow device can be scanned for an immediate (4 seconds) result, providing quick and low-cost identification of FPT.

Key advantages

Allowing for monitoring of passive failure transfer across the dairy sector without the need for a veterinary surgeon onsite, the ImmunIGY test will see health, productivity and sustainability improved, and antimicrobial usage, with the consequent risk of the development of antimicrobial resistance, reduced. Notably, this test now extends its reach by allowing the detection of immunoglobulin levels in older calves under 40 days.

The test will therefore be influential in driving increasingly sustainable systems and therefore improve the quality of the supply chain. Farms which routinely monitor IgG status have been shown to suffer significantly lower rates of failure of passive transfer, highlighting the importance of monitoring.

Tim Downes, Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers vice chairman and head judge, said the winning entry was seen as a new step forward in measuring the success of rearing healthy calves: “The judges were impressed with the potential benefits for the dairy industry by allowing testing of colostrum intake up to 42 days old.”

Mark Cokayne, Bimeda general manager, welcomed the award: “We are thrilled that by using the Immunigy Bovine IgG test producers can now assess calf IgG levels with definitive direct results. Praise is also due to our partners in this project; Synergy Farm Health, Soma Bioscience and Buitelaar. It has been a real team effort to get to this point and we are all excited about the future.”

The runners-up for the prestigious award were:

• National Milk Records with GenoCells, an innovative herd management and herd improvement service centered around genomic testing.
• DeLaval with DeLaval Plus, an online platform that uses the most advanced level of farm management analysis to give farmers the tools to turn on all their farm data into actionable and easily understood information.