Jodi Delago, Product Development Manager at Arm & Hammer Animal and Food Production, recently spoke to The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell at IPPE in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

What's new at Arm & Hammer?

We are launching two products at IPPE. They are CERTILLUS HatchWell and CERTILLUS MoveWell. These products have been developed to tackle a couple of issues the industry is facing currently with different species of Enterococcus.

Enterococcus has been known to cause kinky back, and our product MoveWell is aimed at mitigating the effects of the disease. More recently the industry has been facing some problems with hatchability, and it seems to be associated with Enterococcus species within the eggs killing embryos at an early stage of incubation. Our HatchWell product was developed to help combat that issue.

How has Arm & Hammer worked to combat the effects of Enterococcus?

What we have done is we have looked for bacteria that would have sort of a three-prong approach.

We know that these bacteria are commonly associated with the intestinal tract of birds and are frequently found there. If they are in the intestinal tract, they do not cause many problems, but once they escape that intestinal tract environment and cause systemic infections, then we start to see issues with lameness for kinky back and the hatchability issues.

Our approach has been to use Bacillus that can help tighten up the intestinal barrier function and find those that can inhibit the pathogens themselves to help really promote a resilient bird and mitigate some of the impacts of the bacteria.

Where does Arm & Hammer develop new products for the industry?

The Science-Hearted Center, Arm & Hammer’s state-of-the-art research laboratory in Wisconsin, houses 30,000 Bacillus strains. We mined our collection to find just the right Bacillus strains to meet the challenges the industry is facing now.

How will the new products be used on the farm?

The MoveWell product is aimed at preventing these issues primarily in broilers; however, breeders can also have issues with lameness due to Enterococcus cecorum, so the products can be used with breeders. They are really meant to be fed over the course of their lifetime. Again, the goal is to strengthen the gut barrier to keep bacterial translocation from happening and to prevent systemic infections from occurring in the first place. We are also trying to keep pathogens in check by having strains that can inhibit them in the gastrointestinal environment.

For the HatchWell product, which is a little different issue, there are different Enterococcus species that seem to be getting into those eggs. We suspect that perhaps that is coming from vertical transmission directly from the breeders. HatchWell is meant to be fed to the breeder to help establish a good intestinal microbiome. Again, we are trying to keep pathogenic bacteria in check, but most importantly keep them inside the gut so they cannot cause problems elsewhere. We have done some field studies that have shown improvements in hatchability, and we are confident that the product can help the industry with this issue.

How are these new products going to help the producer?

Hatchability rates have fallen dramatically over the course of the last 10 years. We believe that HatchWell can help improve those rates, and that is going to cut costs and help hatcheries provide more birds in the field.

With the MoveWell product, lameness issues cause significant losses for the industry as well, so we can improve livability with the product and help producers keep their birds moving well.