ImmnuIGY Bovine IgG from Bimeda was named winner of the Royal Dairy Innovation Award at Dairy-Tech last week (7 February).

ImmunIGY Bovine IgG is a novel test that checks whether a calf (up to 42 days old) has received sufficient antibodies from the colostrum (IgG levels). The blood test is easy to conduct using a lancet and directly measures IgG levels using a lateral flow device (LFD) in just 10 minutes.

Calves receiving insufficient, high-quality colostrum in the correct timeframe will suffer from Failure of Passive Transfer (FPT) and have been shown to be more susceptible to disease and poorer performance in terms of daily live weight gains.

Farms which routinely monitor IgG status have been shown to suffer significantly lower rates of failure of passive transfer, highlighting the importance of monitoring.

Head Judge and RABDF Vice Chairman, Tim Downes says: “This year’s winner of the Royal Innovation Award was seen as a new step forward in measuring the success of rearing healthy calves.”

He continues: “The judges were impressed with the potential benefits for the dairy industry by allowing testing of colostrum intake up to 42 days old.”

“Bimeda are incredibly proud to have received this award,” says Bimeda General Manager Mark Cokayne.

“We are thrilled that by using the Immunigy Bovine IgG test producers can now assess calf IgG levels with definitive direct results. Praise is also due to our partners in this project; Synergy Farm Health, Soma Bioscience & Buitelaar Group. It has been a real team effort to get to this point and we are all excited about the future.”

Bimeda will be formally recognised in a presentation by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal later this year.

The runners up for the award were: National Milk Records (NMR) with GenoCells; an innovative herd management and herd improvement service centred exclusively around genomic testing and DeLaval with DeLaval Plus; an online platform that uses the most advanced level of farm management analysis to give farmers the tools to turn on all their farm data into actionable and easily understood information.