. Photo: C.J. Miller / Hoosier Ag Today.There’s a new agbioscience company based in West Lafayette, Indiana called Krishi. They’ve developed a brand-new platform called SHERPA that’s designed to help cattle producers and veterinarians.
“It began with a problem,” says Aaron Gilbertie, Chief Executive Office of Krishi. “Our chief engineer today owns a cattle feedlot, and he came to us and said, ‘I wish I could figure out a way to better assess which antibiotics to use because I waste a lot of time and money,’ and that sort of began the journey.”
He says SHERPA provides testing of beef and dairy cattle to make sure they’re receiving the right antibiotic treatments.
“Let’s say I’m a cattle producer and I have an animal that’s exhibiting signs of BRD (Bovine Respiratory Disease). I’ve made a determination that I want to treat this animal. Normally, that producer would reach for an antibiotic and typically that’s based on their best guess and what they think the disease might be. What we’re looking to do is elevate that decision, so the first treatment counts and is a better performer.”
He says the SHERPA antibiotic guidance platform is simple to use—and provides rapid results.
“There are two components: One we call SHERPA Vision, which is an integrated heater and imager device. The second is a SHERPA Chip, which includes all of the embedded reagents inside a single chip all a cattle producer would need to do is take a nasal swab from that animal—or if the veterinarian is there, perhaps they want to do a deep pharyngeal swab.
“They dilute that in a little bit of saline and they apply it simply to our chip. In one application with a needle, they put it on our SHERPA Vision and within one hour, our device will tell them what antibiotics might be less effective, so that they don’t pick those. Instead, they pick the ones that will be most effective, thereby improving animal health and husbandry, and also improving the bottom line.”
Gilbertie adds that SHERPA has also been developed for veterinary use with cats and dogs.
For more information about the new about the new SHERPA platform from Krishi, visit KrishiDiagnostics.com.
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