An amazing feed powder mix that can improve the immune system and enhance the performance of animals has been developed by a Filipino engineer, offering an inexpensive solution to various health problems encountered by the country’s poultry and livestock industry.
It is a product of nanotechnoogy, as applied by Walther Alvarez, a 49-year old management and industrial engineering graduate of Mapua Institute of Technology.
(Nanotechnology, the science of the teeny-tiny, is derived from nano, Greek for dwarf. It deals with the study of molecular and atomic particles, a world that is measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter). By comparison, a human hair is 80,000nm wide, DNA is about 2nm wide, whereas individual atoms are less than a nanometer.
Nanotechnology involves a process called molecular manufacturing – altering the molecular structure of any physical matter to come out with altered behavior. A nanotech product refers to any substance that is engineered at the scale of a nanometer which is about three to five atoms across. By messing with atoms, an engineer can alter a substance so it does new functions.
The feed additive, developed by accident in 1999, has since then been tested – and proven, by hog raisers in Cavite and Batangas to improve the general well-being of their herd regardless of age. It promotes growth, restores vitality and keeps hogs away from diseases, thus helping swine raisers improve their bottom line.
Over the last six years, the formulation had been found effective in preventing scouring and pneumonia among pigs. It has worked well even in seemingly hopeless cases, such as in freak, lame and weak piglets which were able to recover within 18 days of continuously taking the additive.
Field test results made available to PAJ News and Features also show that dry sows have become pregnant a month after intake of the ‘wonder powder’ while boars with poor semen quality were able to improve their sperm counts and motility, restoring their reproductive capacity.
Even poultry farm managers and owners south of Manila are impressed by the powder’s exquisite qualities. Francis Tecson of Palanca Ilaya, San Jose, Batangas, has reported that his 22-day old broilers had reached weights ranging from 800 to 950 grams, or up to 30 percent heavier than same aged chickens fed with diet less the additive.
Angelito Roque, another broiler raiser from San Jose, Batangas, who also used the pre-mix, said that when he harvested his 600-bird flock after 40 days, the average weight of his 586 surviving chickens reached 1.8 kg., with the heaviest weighing 2.1 kg.
"Magana silang kumain, masigla, walang sakit, at mabilis lumaki," he described his birds fed with the additive.
Pol Toledo, a layer farm owner from Indang, Cavite, has another positive experience with the product. Even if his 5,150 Babcock pullets had reached the age of 26 weeks, they had been laying up to 4,740 eggs in a single day, a high 93.4 percent egg production rate for layers that age.
Product development by accident
The product, registered with the Bureau of Animal Industry as a performance and immune enhancer and sold under brand name ATOVI, was developed by accident.
It was conceived out of a "fun experiment" done by Alvarez and his siblings on farm animals like broilers, layers, pig, goat, cattle and carabao which the family leisurely raised in its 4.5-hectare vacation farm in Balete, Batangas, seven years ago.
Out of the blue, a physician brother and a biochemist sister thought of formulating vitamin and mineral supplement for their animals. Then they tasked Walther, who has background in nuclear engineering, to monitor the animals’ performance. But before he fed the product, he curiously tinkered with it, subjecting it to nanotechnology and combining the vitamins and minerals into one blend. This unconventional move is an unacceptable practice in formulating nutrients because mixing vitamins and minerals together degrades vitamins’ potency.
The feed supplement was eventually fed to the animals, anyway. But not one of the Alvarez siblings followed up its impact on growth performance, forgetting the product altogether. All they can recall was when they butcher the pigs and broilers, they noticed both meats to be tender and juicy, had few fat, and tasted like the native hog and fowl. They also noticed that their layers yielded bigger eggs with yellow orange yolk and with very few soft shells.
Market potential
The health benefit and commercial potential of the feed supplement soon dawned in the mind of Alvarez when a scouring plague spread all over Balete sometime in 2001. The disease wiped out backyard hogs in the neighborhood but surprisingly spared all poultry and livestock inside their family farm.
"It was an unusual conclusion. All of a sudden I realized our supplemental mix must have unique qualities that improve health, fight stress, and improve stamina," Alvarez said.
After reluctantly hiring a salesman who went around town selling the additive, more buyers and users reported amazing results. One taker confessed he had succeeded in saving 15 of his 30 piglets on the brink of death caused by scouring.
Another neighbor, who happened to be a Bureau of Animal Industry employee, attested to the product’s efficacy on a number of animal diseases and even went on convincing Alvarez to have the feed additive registered with BAI.
Independent studies on the product’s effect on broilers done by the Animal and Dairy Science Cluster of the University of the Philippines at Los Baños also showed that it can reduce feed consumption and improve feed efficacy, allowing income over feed and chick cost to rise dramatically.
More findings
In subsequent field trials and actual demonstrations, ATOVI has been proven as an effective immune and growth enhancer, improving the physiological condition of any livestock and providing immediate and optimal response, absorption, conversion, stability and efficacy of the nutritive value of feed inputs and medication program.
Given the astonishing results and despite limited distribution in the last few years, Alvarez said he was now ready to promote his product for wider use by the poultry and livestock sector. This, he said, is in the hope of sharing the product’s enormous benefits with Filipino animal raisers.
"Our farmers ought to be given opportunities to be more productive and competitive so it’s about time our product reaches them for their own advantage," he said. "Rather than seen as competitor to conventional feeds and veterinary health products, ATOVI actually serves as catalyst and their partner to effective and treatment of disease and stimulation of appetite," he explained.
He pointed out that the additive improves feed efficiency or conversion by maintaining health gut, enhancing nutrient digestability and utilization, and promoting faster recovery animals, and reduce ammonia from waste products.
Currently, the product is being used by satisfied hog and layer farms and feed mills like Holiday Hills Stock and Breeder Farm, Leslie Farms, Philac Farm, G Nilo Farm, Desmeg Farm and Feed Mills, Magicorp Feed Mills, to name a few.
