He recalled that saline solution does an effective anti-bacterial job and that hospitals had moved away from iodine-based sanitisers. But the only teat sprays on the market in New Zealand for many years had iodine and chlorhexidine with surfactants, which are now presenting some residue issues for dairy products going into the Chinese market.
With the help and business partnership of chemist friend, John Hawken, of Hamilton, what is now Teat-Mate was formulated, developed, approved and launched at the National Fieldays.
The new product, based on saline, glycerine and aloe vera, took four years to conceive, test and get through the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines approval process.
Lethbridge was told the process would have been shorter had the product been a reformulation of the traditional iodine and chlorhexidine ingredients.
“The field is crowded with copies; this is the first new formulation and mode of action in years,” he said.
It also wasn’t easy navigating the registration process for a start-up company, Beulah AgriPharm, which is a partnership of the Lethbridge and Hawken families.
Chris and Pauline Lethbridge, and now their daughter Christie, are dairying at Hukerunui, north of Whangarei, on 120ha milking platform and 20ha runoff, stocked at three cows/ha and running a split-calving herd, also milking OAD.
They run 360 cows and target 110,000kg milksolids annual production. They adopted OAD milking primarily to maximise net profit, but with the associated benefits of better reproductive performance and animal health. But there are some issues with OAD cows on animal health, mainly higher rates of mastitis and drier cow teats.
Cows can have the cups on up to 10 minutes or 600 pulsations and are prone to cowpox and cracked teats, which can be aggravated by weather and injuries and lead to mastitis. For a OAD herd a teat spray with a higher rate of glycerine needs to last 24 hours between milkings.
Lethbridge asked his friends John and Amanda Hawken, both scientists, if his idea of a teat spray with saline as an active ingredient would work. Neither could foresee any issues around chemical incompatibility of the ingredients.
So the formulation of aloe vera and saline, with a higher rate of glycerine as an emollient was created. Testing established no residues in the normal Fonterra supplier milk-testing regime.
Teat-Mate is close to getting organic certification, although that was not the sole target in development. The developers believe it would also be very good for raw milk marketers.
The market for teat sprays is believed to be $80 to $100 million annually, multiplying up the numbers of cows by the volume of spray.
Teat-Mate can be ordered online at www.teatmate.co.nz, and phone orders through 0800TEATMATE (0800 832 862) can be charged to farmers RD1 and Farmlands accounts, with delivery free to their local store.
It’s sold in 20-litre, 200-litre and 1000-litre containers as a concentrate and the recommended water dilution rate is one-in-five – one litre of Teat-Mate to four litres of water.
The Beulah AgriPharm partners believe their prices are competitive with other formulations, and affordable for dairy farmers. Another benefit with Teat-Mate is that it doesn’t foam like iodine products.
The partners have other ideas in development with more products to come, using Chris’s drive to find simpler and better ways of doing tasks on dairy farms, and solving problems that will make farmers’ lives easier.
After Fieldays he stepped back from milking on the Hukerunui dairy farm, where daughter Christie has taken over, as he goes into business with Beulah AgriPharm.
The partners believe Teat-Mate has a global market, but they want it to remain Kiwi made. Manufacturing is carried out by Jaychem, East Tamaki, Auckland, a Bio-Gro certified manufacturer.
