The Affect of Mycotoxins on Livestock

Mycotoxins are toxic substance that are produced by mold that grows in the food of the livestock during the handling or storage. Molds can produce mycotoxins under a wide range of conditions and can enter the animal through feed or through their bedding.

How Mycotoxins Affect livestock?

Mycotoxins have a number of negative effects on livestock. Here are the most common types of ways that they can cause damage to livestock –

• Animals will start to eat less food than they usually do. Some might even refuse to eat at all.
• The animals will be able to absorb little nutrients from the food that they eat. In addition, their body will metabolise fewer nutrients in the body.
• The hormone system of the livestock can also be affected due to mycotoxins. The endocrine and exocrine systems will be adversely affected.
•  The immune system of the livestock will have to work a lot harder and will stop working entirely in time.
  

Biologically, mycotoxins can harm the livestock in a number of ways that is not seen with the naked eye at first. It produces liver and kidney toxicity. It also affects the central nervous system of the animals. It greatly altars the fertility and the reproduction cycles in the animals. More often than not it decreases the immune system of the body and makes it totally non-functioning. Some of the main types of mycotoxins that are produced from the fungus in grain are Aflatoxin, Ochratoxin, Trichothecene, Vomitoxin and Zearalenone.

How To Fight Mycotoxins?

First, you need to keep a check on the condition of the animals to find out if they are affected by mycotoxins. One of the best treatments is the binder that pulls the mycotoxins out of the system of the animal. You can normally see results within 30 days. In addition to that, the bedding of the animals needs to be cleaned more often in order to keep it mold free. You can also use a mold inhibitor in the grain itself in order to keep the infestation from occurring. The adding of mycotoxins additive to the feed can help increase the shelf life and prevent the mold development in  a number of situations.

How to Determine Safe Levels of Mycotoxins

Even after using the best quality control systems in the world, animal farmers often find themselves stuck with mycotoxin contaminated grain or feed. The first question that comes to mind is: are the levels of mycotoxin found in feed safe for the animals or do they need to  discard the whole batch. Before going into the details, we need to know the affect of mycotoxins on animals. This helps to determine whether the levels of mycotoxins can cause harm to the animals.

Chemical Class and Structure
There are about 500 types of fungi that cause mycotoxins to be present. These belong to different chemical classes and each of them affects the animals that consume them differently. Apart from that, the exact chemical structure of the mycotoxin and the binder inclusion rates are also important in order to reduce the toxicity levels.

Number of Mycotoxins Present
It has been noticed that in the majority of cases two or more mycotoxin contamination’s occur simultaneously. This can affect the toxicity levels of the mycotoxins that are present.

Species and Strain of Animals Affected by Mycotoxins
There are some animals that are more sensitive to mycotoxins whilst there are others that are less sensitive to it. Genetic improvement in farm animals also play a role in the kind of sensitivity that they show to mycotoxin viruses.

Health of the Animals
The stress levels, physiological state, nutritional levels and disease status of the animal  needs to be determined in order to find out the response in their body to certain levels of mycotoxins present in the feed.

Number of Animals Affected
Different numbers of animals need to be infected in order to judge the level of effect. Thus, the growth rate needs to be determined in order to determine the level of toxicity in the animals.

Sampling Procedure
The sampling procedure followed for the collection of the virus needs to be accurate as this is the basis on which the affect of the toxicity of the animal feed is determined.

Length of Time the Animals has been exposed
The tolerance levels to mycotoxins are determined by the exposure to the mycotoxin virus in the animals. The risk of harm to the animal is increased with increase in exposure time.

Treatment and Prevention of Mycotoxicosis in Poultry

Mycotoxicosis is a very common disease found in farm animals caused by a natural toxin produced by fungus. In poultry this disease mainly occurs from these toxin-producing fungi getting embedded and thriving in their grain and feed. Many of these mycotoxins exhibit additive or synergistic effects along with many other natural toxins, infectious agents, and nutritional deficiencies.  Quite a few of them are chemically stable and remain toxic for a long time. Their early treatment and prevention can go a long way in tackling this serious problem.

Treatment

Once the disease has been diagnosed, the immediate step should be to replace the toxic feed with clean, fresh feed. The treatment of the ongoing disease should be to heal and minimize the spread of disease. Often feeding the poultry with prescribed vitamins, or trace minerals such as selenium, proteins and lipids along with food and water supplementation can expedite the treatment. Substandard management practices are often detrimental to the infected poultry and must be sorted as soon as possible. Another great strategy for its treatment, especially if contaminated feed is present, is to feed specific nutrients that metabolize and form detoxicants. For instance, supplemental methionine and N-acetylcysteine can be a good antidote to counteract the aflatoxin infection by enhancing formation of the glutathione compound.

Prevention

They say prevention is the best cure. This adage holds especially true in this case. The most important but highly effective preventive measure can be to purchase high quality and mycotoxin contamination free feeds and ingredients. The second measure is to implement management practices that ward off the spread of mold and mycotoxin formation especially during the feed transportation and it’s storage.

The feed storage and the feeding systems must be regularly inspected to spot any flow problems. Mycotoxins thrive and flourish in decaying, crusted feed in feeders, feed mills, and storage bins. So cleaning them immediately and on a regular basis can have immediate benefits. Keeping the moisture of grain below 12% by sun drying them regularly can help in  mycotoxin inhibition.