In reviewing my previous post, I find that I slipped up on pounds and kilograms (kg).

With the contrasting of two test groups, the control with neither Agrastim nor antibiotics and the second group using Agrastim only, I computed the increase weight brought to market and used pounds when I should have used kilograms (kg).

The paragraph should have read:

"When we deal with these numbers, what you state as nearly identical, takes on a whole new appearance of being incredibly significant and can yield practical cost savings to the industry.  If we take the 150 million chickens / week slaughtered the .0461 kg weight increase at day 29 (remember that it is 48 days to slaughter so the weight gain will be greater but the study was for 29 days), the poultry industry could realize an increase of bird weight for sale of 6.915 million kg if the ratio stayed the same."

If we used pounds then the 6.915 million kg would have been (at 2.2 pounds/kg) written:  "the poultry industry could realize an increase of bird weight for sale of 13.83 million pounds if the ratio stayed the same."

I need to point out that in the previous post, I used reported numbers and applied them as carefully as I can.  As we can see, the decimal computations dealing in 1/1,000 is extreme but the poultry industry deals with that for any determination of significant savings. 

Also, the extrapolation of feed conversion and weight gain from day 29 to day 48 of slaughter can be determined but  I used the 29 day weight gain to calculate the above 6.915 million kg weight gain per 150 million chickens/week brought to market.  Again, the inference is that the weight gain/savings could be larger.

I need to also point out that in using the 2006 reported poultry industry averages of 6.3636 kg feed to bring a 2 kg chicken to market, that works out to 3.1818 kg feed per 1 kg of chicken which is far greater than the feed conversion rates interpolated from Frame 43.

I attribute that to contrasting the preciseness of the data presented in Frame 43 on BioAgra's website versus the reported industry averages which I would treat as far less precise, only to be used to indicate order of magnitude.  If the numbers reported for 2006 are more precise, then the cost per chicken is substantially higher just for feed/corn alone.

So, what I am saying is that the numbers used and computed in my posts are to indicate order of magnitudes of costs and potential savings but are in no means to be interpreted as precise industry measures with the exception that I applied the precise numbers reported in the studies on BioAgra's website.

And, I stress that I am not including the benefits of Agrastim in reducing the cost of Necrotic Enteritis, lowered mortality rates, reducing the cost of dealing with a multitude of other infectious agents, lowered stress/higher immune system response, etc.

All of this will be factored in determining a cost/benefit analysis.

The weekend is almost here.  I am looking forward to getting away from several weeks of an incredibly volatile stock market. 

I look forward to the stock market stabilizing in the next couple months and for VYTC to kick in high gear through BioAgra and ExypnoTech gmbh.

Kent