ICC Brazil enters into partnership with swine farm to carry out research

Demonstrate the effectiveness of animal nutrition products in practice: this is the main goal of a partnership between ICC Brazil, a pioneering company that creates innovative solutions based on yeast additives for animal nutrition, and a commercial swine farm, located in the countryside of São Paulo, in Leme. “This partnership will allow ICC to carry out even more advanced scientific research related to their products. This is quite important since experiments carried out under actual field conditions improve the reliability of experiment results,” the National Sales Manager at ICC Brazil, Ricardo Barbalho says.

The farm has about 1,700 hogs and three installations for the nursery phase: the first has 48 stalls, and the other two has 50 stalls each. The farm also has maternity installations, as well as facilities for growing and termination phases, own feed manufacturing plant and silos to distribute the feed in the nursery installations. The automated feeding equipment installed on the farm allows for simultaneous experiments and the use/evaluation of different diets. “This equipment feeds up to 120 stalls, and we can accurately have up to four dietary treatments in different phases. This will be important for research within ICC, precisely to have an environment that simulates all commercial challenges of the field, and to have a large number of animals in each experiment,” the R&D Manager at ICC Brazil, Melina Bonato explains.

It is the third farm in Brazil to receive the automated feeding equipment. The decision to build this structure derives from the need to better understand the use of yeast-based solutions and the applicability and rational use of the products. The ease in designing, building experimental protocols, and obtaining results are highlighted by the MSc Luiz Antônio Vitagliano, Consultant, and Nutritionist. “The processes of genetic improvement increasingly bring us the need to know the nutritional values that animals need. This is why ICC made such investments: to learn more about animals’ demands and thus improve the quality of ingredients used in the feed within the swine-breeding system.”

Research – ICC Brazil invests R$ 1.5 million in research and development of new solutions for animal nutrition per year and is expanding its staff of researchers and technicians to enlarge its product line. The company has also partnered up with universities in Brazil and abroad to prove the efficiency of each item and confer credibility and reliability to the studies and experiments performed.