Maskon has further developed its vaccine machines. Now, three vaccines can be injected simultaneously, which often means that two or three vaccination operations can be reduced to one.
Maskon’s vaccination machines VX-4 and VX-8 have revolutionized vaccination in the aquaculture industry. Since the launch, the company’s specialists in Stjørdal, Norway have continuously worked on developing the system with various forward-looking dosing units that can also provide existing machines with increased flexibility and capacity. As the first in the world, Maskon could offer a vaccine unit that injects two vaccines in the abdomen simultaneously. Since then, they have been the first to develop a solution for dosing vaccines intramuscularly. Now, they have introduced the first unit for triple vaccine injection in the abdomen, which has been implemented at Måsøval Fiskeoppdrett AS in Frøya.
-The new unit means that all relevant vaccines can be injected in a single process without reducing the vaccination rate, says Jon Anders Leikvoll, Managing Director of Maskon.
This entails a significant streamlining, while reducing the stress and mortality rate of the smolt in relation to running two or three rounds of vaccination, says Jon Anders.
The experiences with the first dosing unit that has been put to use at Måsøval Fiskeoppdrett so far have been very good.
– We started using the new unit a little over a week ago, and so far we have vaccinated around 1.2 million smolts without any significant technical problems, says Fish Health Manager Arnfinn Aunsmo.
-It also seems like the smolt are tolerating this vaccination well. We have great confidence that this new vaccination solution will provide benefits in terms of increased efficiency and reduced stress on the smolt!
Jon Anders explains that one challenge with injecting multiple vaccines at the same time is that the viscosity of the vaccines can be very different. “While one vaccine may be like water, another may have a more oily viscosity, which means they behave quite differently,” he says.
It has developed solutions for this challenge, and today they can inject three different vaccines simultaneously with very high accuracy, with dosages as low as 0.02 ml. This volume is equivalent to approximately one-third of a water droplet!
– The nice thing about this solution is that it can be retrofitted onto the machines that are already in operation. This means that you can easily increase capacity and flexibility.
