SweetPro Feeds draws on its many years of fermentation experience to take a bold step toward creating a block for cattle on bloat-prone wheat and alfalfa pasture. There are many parallels between what happens in a steel tank during fermentation of feed grains and in cattle as “four-legged fermentation tanks.” Excess high-surface-tension foam in a steel tank creates a spill-over mess, but in cattle it can kill. It has to be counteracted with anti-foam strategies, which revolve around vegetable oil and proteolytic enzyme. Now similar techniques are being employed in SweetPro’s wheat and alfalfa Pasture Ranger block.

Researchers have long recognized the benefits of added vegetable oil and recommend it for bloat prevention. However, they also note the difficulty of getting consistent daily ingestion of enough oil. SweetPro’s Pasture Ranger includes high vegetable oil content, which is dispensed evenly and daily.

This unique, patented formula consists of fermented grains (barley malt, oats, wheat and flax), yeast, live enzymes, dried distiller’s grain, and probiotics and prebiotics to improve animal health, milk production and weight gain.