What Veterinarians Need to Know About Gel Technology

In both laboratory animal research and poultry production applications, keeping animals hydrated yet dry and comfortable during transit can be a challenge. Traditional hydration alternatives are often not practical. They can be messy and hard to manage, labor intensive to prepare, or inconsistent in quality—frequently resulting in limited access to the hydrating medium or wetting the animals and bedding. Animals getting wet during shipment can result in chilling, increased stress, and even mortality. Gel technology offers a novel approach that takes the guesswork out of water supplementation and provides a cleaner, drier, ready-to-use, and more convenient solution for keeping your animals hydrated, reliably.

Hydration for Laboratory Animal Research

The proper access to hydration is a fundamental requirement for the ethical use and care of animals in institutional research settings. While traditional cage watering systems and bottles are industry standard and effective for routine water supply, there are a number of situations where they simply are not practical.  Shipping high-value genetic breeding pairs and mouse models from breeders to animal research institutions is critical to the global research community and demands the highest assurance of supportive care for the health and well-being of those animals during transit. HydroGel is particularly efficient for animal transportation by providing a clean, dry, and single-use solution for hydrating lab animals in transit. 

HydroGel is also a very effective hydration source for compromised and recovering animals that may have difficulty moving or reaching the traditional water bottle sipper. In addition, during the stage that weanlings are first learning the transition to water bottles or automatic watering systems can be a period of uncertain consistent hydration. Hydrogel for weanlings at the transitional stage ensures access to a reliable water supply. 

Gel technology provides the most labor-effective, animal-friendly, and reliable way to administer hydration, and helps leading research institutions improve their research outcomes and maintain the wellbeing of animals.

Hydration for Poultry Agriculture

Veterinarians working in the commercial industry often find that transit time for breeder chicks can be up to 36 hours during regular domestic shipping and as long as 72 hours for global shipments. Maintaining an available source of hydration supplementation that is easy to access and consume reduces the likelihood of chick dehydration and supports a healthier chick upon arrival. It is important that the supplemental hydration source not wet the chicks or the crate paper to minimize any temperature sensitivity due to chilling. Ensuring proper hydration of day old chicks and poults increases survival rates by enhancing the hatchlings’ ability to overcome the stress of transportation.

ClearH₂O's gel technology provides ready-to-use, non-wetting hydration and nutritional supplements that allow hatchlings and bedding to stay dry during transit, improving chick health and welfare and overall performance for a strong start at placement.

Ensuring you deliver all essential nutrients, electrolytes, and vitamins to the animals in your care is critical to their health and welfare and performance. Our Gel technology provides an excellent delivery method for providing supplemental hydration and nutrition in a combined single-serving when standard diets aren't meeting the needs of your animals.

Nutrition for Research Animals

Compromised or recovering animals can have vastly different appetites and dietary requirements compared to healthy animals. Most animal care professionals are very familiar with lab animals of different genetic makeup, life stage, and/or stage of research investigation and the differences in food flavor preferences and general consumption that can occur which impacts the general health and well-being of these animals. When standard diets are unappealing or sub-optimal for meeting the nutritional needs of the animals in your care, gel technology provides highly palatable nutrition and dietary enrichment to laboratory animals that is life stage and application specific in a convenient, easy-to-administer gel delivery format.

Depending on the species and application, administering medicine to laboratory animals or livestock can have distinct challenges to ensure accurate dosage. In the case of research animal care professionals, injections are often used as a means of delivering a variety of therapeutics, but this method itself can cause pain and stress to the animals and requires staff with specialized training, increasing labor costs. In the case of poultry production, veterinarians and hatchery management most commonly use water spray cabinets as the traditional method of application. Yet, ensuring uniform individual dosing is uncertain and inoculation rates are often highly variable. 

ClearH₂O's gel technology products provide more consistent, efficacious, and convenient medication delivery to research laboratory animals and poultry, increasing overall animal health and welfare.

Delivering Medication to Lab Animals

While pain medication is intended to reduce the symptoms associated with certain disease states or procedures, it also introduces unnecessary additional pain and stress, depending on route of administration. According to a 2018 survey conducted by ClearH₂O, the vast majority of animal research professionals that responded indicate they deliver analgesics via injection. For example, respondents selected injection as their primary method of delivering analgesics in the following contexts:

• 85% Pre-op major surgery
• 90% Post-op major surgery
• 71% Pre-op minor procedures
• 81% Post-op minor procedures 

In addition to requiring animal care professionals and staff qualified to properly administer injections, the handling, restraint, and actual injection causes stress and pain to the animal, which is counteractive to the ethical commitment of optimizing animal health and welfare.

ClearH₂O's gel technology is a cost-conscious, labor-effective, and pain-free solution for delivering medication to your laboratory research animals.

Managing Disease in Poultry Agriculture

In poultry production, managing disease through effective methods of mass application is critical; however, consumer demand for antibiotic-free meat has taken away one of the key disease control management tools from veterinarians. As a result, the role of effective vaccination strategies are an increasingly important part of the poultry veterinarian's arsenal. Methods of administering vaccines must be user friendly and efficient while applying to each hatchling a uniform dose of vaccine. In the case of achieving inoculation through orally delivered vaccines, the level and uniformity of uptake of the vaccine will determine the level of disease cycling and subsequent development of protective immunity. 

ClearH₂O manufactures gels that optimize both consumption and target ingredient delivery in animals. Our products are designed to improve health and performance while maximizing outcomes for animal research and poultry production in an easy-to-use, convenient, and cost-effective format.

Product benefits include:

• Optimized delivery
• Increased consumption
• Improved dosage
• Improved inoculation
• Better supplementation

Gel technology advancements bring a consistent, palatable source of hydration, nutrition, and medicine delivery to animals, making it essential knowledge for any veterinarian in research or poultry agriculture fields.

ClearH₂O's research products are barrier-packed, Gamma/E-beam irradiated, non-wetting soft gels containing pure water and purified nutrients. Our products provide a consistent amount of hydration and nutrition during transport, and act as an excellent supplement for general health, breeding, compromised, and recovering animals.

ClearH₂O's agriculture products are ready-to-use and room temperature shelf-stable. The hydration supplement, hatchery processing and brooder support products enhance day-old chick and poult health to ensure a strong start. 

Would you like more information about how gel technology can improve your processes, boost efficiency, and provide genuine cost-savings while prioritizing animal health and welfare? Request a sample or book a consultation below and discover the many ways ClearH₂O’s gel technology helps improve research and production outcomes and enrich animals’ lives.