Drug – bio-affecting and body treating compositions – Preparations characterized by special physical form – Specially adapted for ruminant animal
Patent
1997-07-15
1999-09-07
Brouillette, D. Gabrielle
Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions
Preparations characterized by special physical form
Specially adapted for ruminant animal
424442, 426 54, 426807, A23K 118
Patent
active
059484314
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to methods for incorporating feed ingredients (particularly, but not exclusively, medicaments) with animal foodstuffs, and to substances useful in such methods.
Treatment of intensively farmed animals with medication is often carried out by "mass medication", that is to say that animals are not treated individually, but as a group. The most efficient way of doing this is by adding the treatment to the animals' feed or drink. Water medication is very labour intensive and may require veterinary supervision, and longer term treatments are much more easily carried out by supplying the group of animals with medicated feed.
Manufactured foodstuffs for animals such as cattle, pigs, and fowl are usually provided in the form of pellets or similar particulate material. Pellets are typically manufactured by combining a cereal base with ingredients such as oil and protein, steam conditioning the mixture (for example at 70.degree. C. for 5 minutes), extruding through a circular die (typically between 2 mm and 15 mm in diameter), cutting into appropriately sized lengths (eg. 5-20 mm), and drying. The finished pellets are generally cylindrically shaped, having a relatively smooth surface, and a density typically of about 1.2 g.cm.sup.-3.
Conventionally, additives such as drugs are incorporated into the feed mixture before the extrusion step. However, because many different drugs are required to be added to feed pellets from time to time, and because the demand for any particular medicated product is generally relatively low compared to the demand for non-medicated feed, it is not usually viable to provide dedicated plant for manufacturing specific products. Instead, batches of medicated feed are manufactured according to need using machinery otherwise used to produce non-medicated feed. A major problem with this manufacturing regime is that the plant needs to be completely cleaned down after the production of each batch of medicated feed, in order to reduce the risk of contaminating subsequent feed batches. This obviously reduces efficiency and increases operating costs.
The addition of active agents to individual batches of feed could be carried out more cost-effectively "off-line", that is to say with non-medicated feed pellets being manufactured continuously, and those batches which require medication being transferred to a separate plant for addition of medicament.
This would require the application of the medicament to the surfaces of the finished pellets, and attempts have been made to accomplish this in the past. However, no reliable technology currently exists to enable medications to be routinely and reproducibly added to the external surface of feed pellets and to remain there during transport and use.
It has now surprisingly been found that reliable homogeneity of active ingredient in the finished feed can be achieved by coating the pellets with a cohesive gel containing the active ingredient. It has furthermore been surprisingly found that gel coating according to the invention tends to leave the feed mixing vessel in which the coating is carried cut substantially free from active agent contamination. Because the coating method is not dependent upon the nature of the active ingredient, the invention will also be of use n adding other substances (such as nutritional supplements), and added ingredients in general.
The present invention therefore provides, in one aspect, a method of incorporating an added ingredient with an animal foodstuff, comprising the step of coating feed pellets (or similar particulate foodstuff material) with a cohesive gel containing said added ingredient.
In some instances, the pellets may be fed to animals directly after coating, but more commonly the gel is dried or absorbed into the pellet, thus entrapping the medication in the pellet and giving protection against attrition and the formation of active agent dust.
In this specification, the term "gel" is to be understood as referring to any viscous cohesive suspension, and the term "gelling agent" to any thicken
REFERENCES:
patent: 3639637 (1972-02-01), Campbell
patent: 4089979 (1978-05-01), Jackson
patent: 5000943 (1991-03-01), Scaglione
patent: 5011679 (1991-04-01), Spanier
patent: 5650184 (1997-07-01), Humphry
patent: 5698246 (1997-12-01), Villamar
Brouillette D. Gabrielle
Vericore Limited
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