Page 13 - Byboost - English

ADVERTORIAL JASPER RAATS
The right supplement
for holistic farmers
•
Aand rectified the chemical imbalance with a supplemental nutrient.
With a strong emphasis on large herds and high-pressure grazing, Mr Wayne Knight of Mokopane, Limpopo, immediately attributed increasing reproductive problems amongst his cattle to stress. He first vaccinated against everything he
could think of, but his losses stopped only when he had his water tested
fter several of Mr Wayne severe drought conditions.
Knight’s cows were Wayne follows a holistic farming ma­ slaughtered to do physio­ nagement system and did not like the idea logical tests, researchers of supplemental injections. However, he from the University of saw no other way out and found that the Pretoria concluded that injections did bring improvement about. copper and selenium Mr Gerrie van Jaarsveld of Bayer re­
shortages caused some cows to apparently commended he try Byboost, which is a abort without any reason. The next step supplemental nutrient for livestock.
AREA
Mokopane, Limpopo
was to analyse the farm’s water.
“For some reason the water in our area has a high bromine content. The theory is that the bromine in the water binds with the copper and selenium, making it unavailable to the cattle,” says Wayne. These days Wayne has to rely heavily on boreholes, because Palmer Estate, the farm of 4 300 ha his family has been farming on since the 1940s, has been suf­ fering for the past few years under the
“I liked the fact that the remedy is given orally. I immediately saw an improvement in my herd’s fertility. Since using Byboost, my herd is less sickly than before and the abortions are now something of the past,” says Wayne.
FARM WITH NATURE
Because he runs his entire farm on a holis­ tic basis, Wayne tries his utmost to avoid medicine wherever he can, especially any
Mr Wayne Knight. PHOTOS: JASPER RAATS
At the recommendation of Mr Gerrie van Jaarsveld from Bayer, Mr Wayne Knight started using Byboost. It is a supplemental nutrient for managing water, electrolytes and essential minerals during times of stress in livestock.
drugs that can affect micro­organisms. “Biological agriculture is all about microbes, earthworms and dung beetles,”
says Wayne.
He says it’s more important to him to
bring about hardiness against diseases in his herd than to take on problems with all kinds of drugs and damage the biological environment in the process.
He does use some of Bayer’s antibiotics to block heart­water outbreaks among his calves.
Along with that, he tries to dip in such a way that he always has some ticks on his cattle for them to build and maintain their own resistance against heart­water.
When the disease breaks out, it usually happens 14 days after dehorning or af­ ter animals have been subjected to other stress conditions.
“We try to block it in that incubation period, and we have never lost animals to heart­water in this way.
Thanks to the use of Byboost the ani­ mals process these stress periods so much better and reproduction figures are back to normal.
ENQUIRIES: 011 921 5736;
web: www.bayeranimalhealth.co.za
Product registration numbers in terms of Act 36 of 1947 on page 3.
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