The Effects of Vomitoxin and Feed Intake on the Performance and Blood Characteristics of Young Pigs

Abstract

Thirty barrows (average weight 8.4 kg) were used in a 3-wk experiment to determine the effects of the ingestion of vomitoxin (deoxynivalenol)-contaminated feed on performance and blood chemistry. The barrows were assigned randomly to consume either: 1) a control diet (C), fed ad libitum, 2) a vomitoxin contaminated diet (V; 10.5 ppm), fed ad libitum, or 3) a vomitoxin contaminated pair-fed at levels equal to those consumed by V animals (PF). The V and PF pigs had similar daily gains (.19 vs .20 kg) and feed intakes (.40 and .39 kg), but both of these were lower (P less than .01) than those for the C-fed pigs (.38 kg daily gain and .72 kg feed intake). The V-fed pigs had lower (P less than .05) hematocrit, hemoglobin, serum glucose and serum phosphorus and tended to have lower serum calcium (P less than .06) than C-fed pigs. The V-fed pigs had higher (P less than .05) hemoglobin and tended to have higher (P less than .08) serum phosphorus and lower (P less than .07) serum calcium than PF animals. There was a high total- and free-bilirubin concentration in serum of C- and V-fed pigs in the last sampling period (3-wk), which may be due to fasting and not cholestasis. No differences among treatments were observed in any of the other blood parameters. These results suggest that the differences in animal performance and blood parameters observed between control-and vomitoxin-fed pigs are mainly due to differences in feed intake.

The progression of deoxynivalenol-induced growth suppression in nursery pigs and the potential of an algae-modified montmorillonite clay to mitigate these effects12

“…2, lower DON levels resulted in negligible feed intake effects after the initial exposure period. These results are consistent with earlier reports, where feed intake was often restored after 7 to 14 d if diets contained less than 3 mg/kg DON (Lun et al, 1985;Grosjean et al, 2002;Rempe et al, 2013). These observations also support the hypothesis that pigs develop some degree of adaptation to DON after the initial exposure period (Dersjant-Li et al, 2003).…”

Efficacy of a Mycotoxin Binder against Dietary Fumonisin, Deoxynivalenol, and Zearalenone in Rats

“…Previous studies showed increased serum chloride in rats given 0.25À1.0 mg/kg bw deoxynivalenol (2.5À10 μg/g in diet), 17 and lower serum calcium and phosphorus in pigs fed 10 μg of deoxynivalenol/g in diet compared with controls, 20 but elevated serum calcium and magnesium were found in rats fed fumonisin B1 (7.5 μg/g), whereas serum chloride, phosphate, and ALP were not altered by fumonisin B1. 16 In our experiment, significant increases of serum chloride and decreases of serum phosphorus and magnesium were found in rats fed the mixture of three mycotoxins, which may be a sign of nephrotoxicity, because a Different letters in individual columns indicate significant difference for different sex (lower case letter for male and capital letter for female, p < 0.05).…”

Effects of feeding diets containing Fusarium (naturally) contaminated wheat or pure deoxynivalenol (DON) in growing pigs

“…Although there is limited evidence that feed conversion may be redltced in pigs fed diets containing more than 8 mg DON kg-' (Blaney and Williams 1991), most previous studies have indicated that the effect of DON on BW is indirect and due to a reduction in feed acceptability and intake (Lun et al 1985;Chavez and Rheaume 1986) xBW is body weight. wSee Table 3 for explanation.…”