Challenge to decrease mortality up to zero with Sol to Bio



" Can you believe that the mortality rate is
less than only 1%? "


E-Dong farm (Jang Kyungwoo, the president and Jang Sijung, the manager) is a swine farm located at Cheongan-myeon, Goesan-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. It’s heading for “zero mortality rate.”

E-Dong farm has total 1,000 pigs including 90 sows, and has produced high quality pigs for 15 years (acquired the Quality Certification from Dodram Pig Farmer’s Cooperative). E-Dong farm consists of five pig pens; each of them is for breeding pigs, pregnant pigs, piglets, growing-finishing pigs and sows.

E-Dong farm purchases 4~5 sows per a month, and annually changes 40% of its sows, E-Dong farm is shipping out 170~180 pigs per a month at around 108kg. Both artificial insemination and natural breeding are being used in E-Dong farm. However, E-Dong farm also always finds it difficult to remove night soil in pigpen.

At first, it has used sawdust for night soil treatment, but it wasn’t effective enough. Thus E-Dong farm decided to leave it to a company specializing in night soil treatment. The cost is US $1,000 per a month for the 60 tons of night soil, but Mr. Jang, the manager, says that the production cost for a pig is only US $75, and it is all because of “moderate price of feed and Biotite V”.

It was last year Mr. Jang first saw natural mineral feed additive Biotite V from Seobong BioBestech Co., Ltd., when his precious pigs died mainly from scorching weather.

He has recorded all details about the pigs since the start of the business. Last year, because of too many dead piglets, he didn’t feel like calculating even the mortality rate.

“While I was worrying about the death of pigs, I could see Biotite V in the ads and I found that one of the salespersons in Seobong BioBestech Co., Ltd. is my acquaintance. He provided me with Biotite V samples,” he recalled.

The critical reason, however, for choosing Biotite V was the recommendation from Dodram Pig Farmer’s Cooperative. “Frankly, I don’t believe not a word from sales persons, so I asked a technical staff at the cooperative whether, if it is beneficial for me to use Biotite V.”

The technical staff said, “When E-Dong farm asked about Biotite V, some of farms of cooperative already had been using the product, and the overall opinion of the farms was positive to the effect of Biotite V in stopping respiratory disease and diarrhea and improving feed efficiency, etc. There was no reason to object to the product. On the contrary, I recommended it.”

About three months have passed since Biotite V was used regularly in the farm, and now Mr. Jang is all for Biotite V.

“With 50kg of samples, at first, I supplied Biotite V only to piglets without expectation, but the results was great. The mortality rate significantly reduced, and there were few weak or sick piglets,” Mr. Jang says. Actually, mortality rate of E-Dong farm reduced by 60~70% since Biotite V, and now it’s unbelievably less than 1%.

Currently, E-Dong farm purchases 300kg of Biotite V per a month, and provides it to all pigs (except for sows) according to the recommended usage.

In addition to the reduced mortality rate, another outstanding efficacy of Biotite V was remarkably decreased diarrhea.

The manager says, “After the use of Biotite V, diarrhea in piglets disappeared and, consequently, the environment of pig pen improved. Most importantly, piglets are growing healthily. Before Biotite V, we had used expensive vaccines and medicines to save the sick piglets, but recently there are only one or two sick piglets, and we just weed them out.”

Usually farmers don’t feel like purchasing new medicines or additives because of the additional costs that should be spent for them. “At first, there seems to arise additional costs for the medicines or additives, but the product which has lots of effects on animals like Biotite V brings much more profits than the costs”, Mr. Jang says.

In case of E-Dong farm, though Biotite V addition caused increased feed cost by 0.6¢/kg, the average cost for medicines diminished by more than 60%, and it resulted in more profits to E-Dong farm.

Manager Jang says, “thanks to Biotite V we could save half of the medicine costs and could keep this farm without difficulty when pig price plunged down.”

Last year, most pig farms went through tough times: shrinkage in consumer market, rapid increase of pigs provided in the market, etc. But E-Dong farm managed to stay profitable. Furthermore, respiratory disease couldn’t be found in the farm. It’s quite natural to find piglets suffer from respiratory disease when the temperature changes a lot between days and nights, but after Biotite V not a cough heard from piglets in E-Dong farm.

According to a technical staff from Seobong BioBestech Co., Ltd., a field test result of Biotite V showed exceptional efficacy. When it was provided for a week to the pigs that were dying with the strongly contagious and lethal diseases like PMWS, PRRS, or PRCV, the pigs recovered from the diseases and became healthy as usual. In addition to it, Biotite V significantly reduced the mortalities

of poultry and cattle by 90%, and increased IgG level, level of immune system, about 86% more. The staff from the company also said, “The remarkable effects of Biotite V in preventing the diseases from corona virus, which could harm both animals and humans, has been proven in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.”

Manager Jang says that actually there is not a pig, which is sick of respiratory disease, found in his farm, and whoever visits E-Dong farm can see the health status of the pigs is quite good.

E-Dong farm is one of the 10 farms that were granted Quality Certification from Dodram Pig Farmer’s Cooperative. For the QC granted farm, technical advisers from the cooperative visit the farms and work as a consultant.

E-dong farm always keeps its position on the upper 10% among plenty of cooperative farms through professional farm management.

Manager Jang expresses his ambition, “I am planning to develop E-Dong farm as the best quality pig producing and technically advanced farm.”




- The Veterinary & Livestock News May 6, 2003 -