Yeast additive boosts lamb productivity

Lambs fed a yeast fermentation addition reach target finishing weights faster – generating more profit, suggests a study.

Animals fed Celmanax from weaning to slaughter resulted in a £18.91 per head advantage compared to lambs which did not receive additional supplementation, according to data from a 2022 farm trial.

Alison Bond, nutritionist for Rumenco and UK distributor of Celmanax, said the biggest contributor to the increase in profit was a significant increase in daily liveweight gains resulting in faster finishing times.

Half of all supplemented lambs were finished by the end of June, with an additional 35%  finished by the trial end. But only 8% of unsupplemented lambs were finished in June, with an additional 17% finished by the end of the trial.

Dr Bond said: “The nutritional benefits from Celmanax allowed lambs to achieve an average daily gain of 530g in the first four weeks of the trial, a 150g advantage over the control group that had an average daily gain of 380g.”

The study involved more than 650 10-week-old lambs on a commercial sheep farm in Wales. Lambs had negative worm counts, were managed on paddocks with a sward height of 9cm (2,500 kg DM/ha) and had free access to a mineral bucket.

Each group was supplemented with creep feed, allocated 1kg/h/day. The control group was fed standard creep feed and the treatment group received creep feed containing Celmanax to provide 0.5g/h/d.

Celmanax is a yeast fermentation additive that has been shown to improve ruminant performance by supporting a stable rumen environment. This in turn improves digestibility and feed efficiency.

The higher financial return from feeding Celmanax was achieved by a combination of fewer days on farm and the lambs earning a higher price by hitting the market early, said Dr Bond.