Probiotics for Show Livestock: What They Can Do, What They Can’t, and Why They Aren’t Enough

You have a tube of probiotic paste in the show box. He got a dose the day he came off the trailer and another the morning he left feed in the feeder, and you are honestly not sure it did anything.

A lot of you have used a paste for years, so here is the short answer first.

Probiotics add live, helpful bacteria to the gut. They can help an animal through a haul, a new pen, a course of antibiotics, and in cattle, sheep and goats, a change in ration. They are not medicine, and they will not fix an animal that is actually sick. They also cannot carry the whole job of gut health by themselves, because most probiotics are just passing through.

That last line is the one worth carrying to the wash rack. It changes how you should feed them.

What rides on this is his appetite. A show animal that is off in the gut goes off feed, and every day he eats light is a day of gain and bloom you do not get back before the show.

What a probiotic actually is

A probiotic is live bacteria, or live yeast, that does the animal some good when enough of it reaches the gut still alive. Every piece of that sentence matters, and most of this article is about the pieces people skip.

On a feed tag you will often see the term direct-fed microbial instead. Same thing. A good tag names the organisms, things like Lactobacillus, Bacillus, Enterococcus or Bifidobacterium.

A rumen and a pig’s gut are not the same job

Cattle, sheep and goats are ruminants. The rumen is the big first compartment of the stomach, and it works like a fermentation vat. Billions of bugs break the feed down first, and most of the energy the animal runs on comes from what they produce. Rumen health is really the health of that bug population.

That is why a ration change is a big deal in a ruminant. The bugs that came home with your steer, lamb or goat were built for the ration where he came from. Hand him yours and they have to re-sort, which takes about two weeks, and he tends to eat light and look flat while it happens. A probiotic is one way to help him through it.

A pig has a simple stomach, more like ours, and most of his fermentation happens farther down, in the large intestine. A show pig moving barns usually goes from mostly corn and soy to mostly corn and soy, so the ration change argument does not really apply to him. For a pig, the case for a probiotic rests on hauling and other stress, and on what antibiotics do to his gut. And when a pig quits eating, the gut problem I worry about first is a stomach ulcer, which no probiotic is going to fix. We wrote that one up in ulcers in show pigs.

What probiotics can do

• Help through stress. Hauling, a new pen, new water and new pen mates, often in the same week as his shots. Stress shifts the gut population, and adding helpful bugs then is reasonable.
• Help a ruminant through a ration change. Those two weeks of re-sorting are where a probiotic earns its keep in cattle, sheep and goats.
• Help after antibiotics. Antibiotics do not sort good bugs from bad ones, so afterward a probiotic gives the gut something to rebuild with. If he is on an oral antibiotic, ask your veterinarian about giving the probiotic a few hours apart from it.
• Do the most for young animals. That is where the strongest research is, calves especially.

I sell a product with probiotics in it, so you should hear the rest from me. The research results are not consistent from one study to the next. They swing with the strain, the dose, the ration and the animal, and a fair amount of what gets fed to show lambs and goats is running ahead of the research. That does not make it useless. It means you read the tag and ask why.

What probiotics can’t do

Most of them do not move in and stay. This is the one that surprises people. Most probiotic bugs do their work on the way through, and when you stop feeding them, they do not stick around. A few organisms used in cattle are given once because they do take up residence in the rumen, but most of what is sold in a tube or a powder is passing through.

So a paste on arrival day is one day. It is not a bad thing to do. But if the stretch you are worried about lasts two or three weeks, the probiotic has to be in him for two or three weeks.

The strain matters. Two products can both say Lactobacillus on the tag and do quite different things, the same way a corgi and a Great Dane are both dogs.

They have to be alive when they get there. Heat kills a lot of them, and so does moisture. A tube that rode on the dash all summer can be carrying far fewer live bugs than the tag says. Pelleting kills many strains outright, and the ones that form spores, like Bacillus, hold up better.

I learned how much this matters when I ran a probiotic program for feedyards years ago. We pulled hundreds of samples out of the bunk to see whether the bugs were still alive when the cattle got to them. Some organisms held up fine. One that was common in cattle products at the time, I never once recovered alive from a bunk sample. It was on the tag, and it was dead before it ever reached a steer.

They are not medicine, and they do not replace the basics. A probiotic does not treat a sick animal, and it does not stand in for clean water, a ration he will eat, his vaccinations or your veterinarian. It sits on top of those.

What to look for in a probiotic

If you are going to buy one, and plenty of good families do, here is what I would check.

1. The organisms, named on the tag. “Probiotic blend” with nothing after it is asking you to take it on faith.
2. Made for the species you are feeding.
3. Stored like it is alive. Cool and dry, lid shut, and not in the show box in August.
4. A company that will tell you why it works and how they know.

What circulates in the groups

Every show group on Facebook has a thread on this. This is where I land on the common ones.

Yogurt and kefir. The bugs in yogurt were picked for turning milk into yogurt, not for anything they do in a rumen or a pig’s gut. A spoonful will not hurt most animals. But if yogurt got him eating, it worked on his taste buds, and that wears off. We went through why in why your show animal won’t eat.

Human probiotic capsules. Probably harmless and probably not much use. The strains were picked for a person’s gut, nobody has tested them in a goat’s rumen, and you are paying human-supplement prices for a guess.

A cud from a healthy goat, sheep or cow. This one has real logic. It moves a whole working rumen population, and veterinarians do a version of it called transfaunation. The catch is that you also move whatever else that donor is carrying, so talk to your veterinarian first and never use a donor you do not know.

A paste on arrival day, and nothing after. Covered above. Not a bad thing to do, and it is one day.

Why probiotics aren’t enough

Even when you get the bugs right, they are one piece of what is going on in that gut.

The bugs need food. That is what a prebiotic is: fiber and carbohydrates the helpful bugs use more readily than the harmful ones. Add bugs with nothing to eat and you are counting on them to find a meal on the way through.

What the bugs make matters. In the feed business, postbiotics usually means what the bugs produce once they are working, the compounds that act on the gut lining. (The scientists who write definitions use the word more narrowly, for bugs killed on purpose and what they made.) Either way, it is the useful output, and it does not depend on a live bug surviving a hot truck.

Then there is the animal himself. Bugs work on the gut. His immune system is a separate job, and it is what he actually answers a new barn with. He steps off the trailer into a whole new set of germs in the same few weeks he gets his shots, and no tube of paste does that job for him.

Why TrueGlo is built the way it is

That is why TrueGlo is not just a probiotic. I built the first version in my kitchen for my own kids’ show lambs, because what we were feeding took up too much room in a two pound ration. It is still small on purpose, about nine grams a feeding for a pig, lamb or goat.

Every TrueGlo bag is built on the same base:

• PreVent Refined Functional Carbohydrates (PRFC), covered by U.S. Patent 11,844,810. It works on the animal, not on the bugs.
• Probiotics, the live bugs.
• Prebiotics, what feeds them.
• Postbiotics, what they produce once they are working.
• Synbiotics, the name for probiotics and prebiotics fed together. The word comes from synergy: the prebiotic feeds the probiotic, so the two work better together than either one alone.

Animals on it stay on feed, respond better to the vaccines you are already giving, and recover faster from stress. PreVent is also documented to improve how an animal responds to treatment, if your veterinarian ever has to treat him. Start it the day he steps off the trailer, and feed it every day.

Lamb or goat: TrueGlo. Steer or heifer: TrueGlo or TrueGlo CR. Pig: any of the four. CR is for pigs and cattle only, and Turbo and Turbo Shag are show pig products. The TrueGlo line page lays all four side by side.

None of this is medicine, and our own page says so. Use TrueGlo alongside what your vet tells you, not instead of it.

When to call your veterinarian

A probiotic is for keeping a good day good. These are not good days. Call your veterinarian, not a Facebook group, when:

• He is off feed and running a fever. Take his temperature before you call, because your vet will ask. A thermometer is the most useful ten dollars in your show box.
• There is blood in the scours, or a lamb or kid with scours is getting weak. Coccidia, worms, grain overload and overeating disease (enterotoxemia) all cause scours and are each handled differently, and a cheap fecal sample tells your vet which one. Our article on deworming show lambs and goats covers worms and coccidia both.
• He is down and will not get up.
• A steer, lamb or goat is bloated, swollen high on the left side. Bloat can kill fast.
• He got into the feed bin. Grain overload in a ruminant is an emergency before he ever looks sick.
• A pig is vomiting, arching his back while he eats, passing black tarry manure, or has been off feed for a day. Those point toward an ulcer.
• A wether is straining and not passing urine. That is not a gut problem. Read urinary calculi in show wethers and call tonight.

Put your eyes on him at every feeding, twice a day, and watch how he comes to the feeder or the bunk. The first light morning is the earliest warning you will get.

The short version

Most probiotics are just passing through. They can help through stress, hauling, antibiotics and a ruminant’s ration change, but only while you are feeding them, and only if the right strain gets there alive. A paste on arrival day is one day. They are not medicine. And the bugs need food, and the animal needs his own immune system answering, which is why a probiotic by itself is not enough.

If you want somebody to look at your program with you, call us at 888.603.2459. We do that for people who never buy a thing from us.

Frequently asked questions about probiotics for show livestock

What do probiotics do for cattle?
They add live, helpful bacteria or yeast to the gut. In cattle most of that action is in the rumen, where bugs do the first round of digestion and make most of the energy the animal runs on. A probiotic can help that population through a ration change, a haul or a course of antibiotics. Most do not move in and stay, so they work while you are feeding them.

What is the best probiotic for cattle?
There is no single best one. Look for a product made for cattle that names its organisms on the tag and has been stored cool and dry. Then make sure water, a ration he will eat, his vaccinations and your veterinarian are in place, because they matter more than which probiotic you bought.

How often can goats get probiotics?
As often as the label says, which for most livestock probiotics means daily. Because most of them pass through rather than move in, they only work while you are feeding them. One dose on arrival day covers one day. If the stretch you are worried about lasts two or three weeks, feed it for two or three weeks.

What are some homemade probiotics that are good for goats?
Honestly, not many. Yogurt and kefir carry dairy cultures picked for making yogurt, not for a rumen, and if they got a goat eating it was mostly the taste. A cud from a healthy goat has real logic, because it moves a whole working rumen population, but it also moves whatever that donor carries. Talk to your veterinarian first and never use a donor you do not know.

Can you use human probiotics for goats?
You can, and it probably will not hurt him, but it is a guess. The strains were picked for a person’s gut, nobody has tested them in a goat’s rumen, and you are paying human-supplement prices. A product made for goats or small ruminants, with the organisms named on the tag, is a better bet.

Should I give probiotics to a goat with diarrhea?
Not instead of finding out why. Coccidia, worms, grain overload and overeating disease all cause scours in goats, each one is handled differently, and a cheap fecal sample tells your veterinarian which it is. A probiotic can help support the gut while it recovers, alongside what your vet prescribes. Blood in the scours, a fever, a goat that is down or a kid getting weak means call your veterinarian now.

Do probiotics help show pigs?
They can help a pig through hauling and other stress, and after a course of antibiotics. Show pig rations do not change much from one barn to the next, so the ration change argument that applies to cattle, sheep and goats does not really apply to a pig. If a pig quits eating, think about a stomach ulcer and call your veterinarian, because a probiotic will not fix one.

What probiotics do vets recommend?
Most veterinarians recommend a probiotic for particular situations, like after a course of antibiotics or through a stressful stretch such as hauling, rather than as a treatment for anything. They will usually point you to a product made for your species with the organisms named on the tag. Ask yours, especially if your animal is on an antibiotic, because the timing between the two matters.

If he is on TrueGlo, does he still need a probiotic paste?
Usually, no. TrueGlo already gives him probiotics, and prebiotics to feed them, every day he eats it. As a rule, adding another probiotic is not going to do any harm. There can be special circumstances, when an animal is under exceptional stress, where a paste on top of it may help. If you are not sure whether your animal is in that spot, ask your veterinarian.

Top image: Lactobacillus paracasei, a probiotic bacterium, under a scanning electron microscope (colorized). Photo by Dr. Horst Neve, Max Rubner-Institut, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.