Plant extracts are secondary plant metabolites, which are responsible for the odor and color of plants. Plant extracts are composed of more than a hundred components and in two different forms: liquid oil (essential oils) and solid powder. Plants extracts have been well considered to have anti-viral, antimicrobial, antioxidative, and anti-inflammatory effects.
Probiotics are categorized into 3 main groups:
- Bacillus,
- lactic-acid-producing bacteria, and
- yeast.
Bacillus-based probiotics are spore-forming and therefore thermal stable. Lactic acid producing bacteria are not spore-forming and survival is of concern during feed processing. It appears that lactic acid-producing probiotics are more beneficial for weanling pigs to help stabilize the gastrointestinal tract after weaning, whereas bacillus-based probiotics are more suitable for growing Ing-finishing pigs to increase the digestibility of nutrients in high fibre diets.
In piglets, Clostridium perfringens type C bacteria frequently cause necrotic enteritis that leads to mortality rates of up to 100%. Antibiotics treatments have no long-term effect due to antibiotics resistance.
Recently a natural plant extract combined with the spore-forming clostridium butyricum probiotics (Suimet B+) has been developed to prevent Clostridium perfringens type A diarrhoea and type C bacterial infections in pig production.
The application of Suimet B+ to 2,2 00 sows significantly reduced the sow mortality in the late gestation under heat stress conditions (Figure 1). 5 to 7 days after using Suimet+, the mortality rate has been significantly reduced.
Figure 1. Effect of Suimet B+ on sows’ mortality
For weaning piglets, adding Suimet B+ for about 40 days could increase body weight by 17% and reduced the mortality rate from 3.5% to 0.5% (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Effect of Suimet B+ on body weight and the mortality rate of weaners (day 62)
A study compiled by our Redox Animal Nutritionists.