Abstract
The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of feeding barley naturally contaminated with Fusarium mycotoxins on growth performance, vulva swelling, and digestibility of dry matter, organic matter, and crude protein of gilts and the recovery of gilts fed normal diets immediately after the exposure to contaminated diets by measuring growth performance and vulva swelling. In Exp. 1, four diets were prepared to contain 0%, 15%, 30%, or 45% contaminated barley containing 25.7 mg/kg deoxynivalenol and 26.0 μg/kg zearalenone. Sixteen gilts with an initial body weight (BW) of 33.3 kg (standard deviation = 3.0) were individually housed in a metabolism crate and assigned to 4 diets with 4 replicates in a randomized complete block design based on BW. During the 14-d feeding trial, individual BW and feed consumption were measured weekly and the vertical and horizontal lengths of vulva were measured every 3 d. From d 10, feces were collected by the maker-to-marker method for 4 d. Blood samples were collected on d 14. During the overall period, the average daily gain, average daily feed intake, and gain:feed of pigs linearly decreased (p<0.01) as the dietary concentration of contaminated barley increased. However, the digestibility of crude protein was linearly increased (p = 0.011) with the increasing amounts of contaminated barley. Increasing dietary Fusarium mycotoxin concentrations did not influence vulva size, blood characteristic as well as immunoglobulin level of pigs. In the Exp. 2, a corn-soybean meal-based diet was formulated as a recovery diet. Pigs were fed the recovery diet immediately after completion of the Exp. 1. During the 14-d of recovery period, the individual BW and feed consumption were measured weekly and the vertical and horizontal length of vulva were measured every 3 d from d 0. On d 7, the feed intake of pigs previously fed contaminated diets already reached that of pigs fed a diet with 0% contaminated barley and no significant difference in growth performance among treatments was observed during d 7 to 14 of the recovery period. In conclusion, increasing levels of mycotoxins in diets linearly decreased the growth performance of pigs, and these damages can be recovered in 7 d after the diet was replaced with a normal diet. The vulva size, blood characteristic, immune responses were not affected by increasing level of contaminated barley in the diets fed to pigs.
Highlights
There is growing concern for mycotoxins on swine production as they can cause reduced growth and feed intake, organ damage, and altered immune responses of pigs (Chaytor et al, 2011)
It was reported that the effect of Fusarium mycotoxins on growth performance of pigs was dependent on the source of mycotoxin in ingredient (Prelusky et al, 1994)
All growth performance measurements linearly decreased (p
Summary
There is growing concern for mycotoxins on swine production as they can cause reduced growth and feed intake, organ damage, and altered immune responses of pigs (Chaytor et al, 2011). Blood samples were collected from all the pigs at concentrations of DON and ZON were 1.677 and 0.323 the completion of study on d 14. It was reported that the effect of Fusarium mycotoxins on growth performance of pigs was dependent on the source of mycotoxin (i.e. purified vs naturally contaminated) in ingredient (Prelusky et al, 1994). Little data from study feeding contaminated barley with Fusarium mycotoxins to pigs is available. The objectives of the present study were to investigate the effects of feeding barley naturally contaminated with Fusarium mycotoxins on growth performance, vulva swelling, and digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), and CP for gilts and the recovery of gilts fed normal diets immediately after the exposure to the contaminated diets by measuring growth performance and vulva size. Nitrogen content of samples was determined by the Kjeldahl method (method 984.13; AOAC, 2005) using a Buchi K-424 digestion and B-324 distillation apparatus (Buchi, Flawil, Switzerland) and gross energy was determined by adiabatic bomb calorimeter (Parr 1261 bomb calorimeter; Parr Instruments Co., Moline, IL, USA) using
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