| Catching respiratory disease and diarrhoea behind high early calf mortality… a $500,000 advance contract with a Japanese farm
uLikeKorea (CEO Kim Hee-jin), a livestock healthcare company, announced on the 5th that it has developed the world’s first orally administered biocapsule for calves.
The company has also filed a patent for an “orally administered biocapsule for calf management and a disease management system incorporating it.” The calf biocapsule brings together the know-how and technology of ‘LiveCare’, the biocapsule for adult cattle that uLikeKorea had already been the first in Korea to develop and commercialise.
LiveCare is a biocapsule administered through the animal’s mouth; from within the stomach it measures body temperature, activity and other indicators and transmits them to an application server. It is an integrated cattle healthcare solution that analyses each animal’s data to diagnose and manage disease, oestrus and pregnancy.
uLikeKorea explained that it succeeded in developing the calf-specific biocapsule after three years of research and development, drawing on roughly 8 million cattle data points accumulated through LiveCare.
Calves have a high rate of early mortality from disease before their immune systems are established. Mortality among Korean native calves reaches 13.2%, peaking at 17.2% at around two weeks of age, mainly from digestive and respiratory disease.
uLikeKorea has signed an export contract with a farm in Japan to supply $500,000 worth of calf biocapsules. It also plans to move aggressively into Brazil, the country with the largest cattle population — a market of more than 200 million adult cattle.
CEO Kim Hee-jin of uLikeKorea <photo> said, “About 900,000 calves are born in Korea every year. Losing a calf is a heavy loss for a farm, and now their diseases can be prevented,” adding, “We plan to begin full service in Korea and abroad from October.”
Cho Mun-sul reporter/freiheit@heraldcorp.com
Original article (Herald Business / 2018.09.05)
This article is a translation of the original Korean-language press coverage. In case of any discrepancy, the original article prevails.