Response of laying birds to mouldy corn based diets and sequestering effect of three toxin adsorbents

Abstract

A study was conducted to determine the fungi profile and proximate composition of mouldy corn; response of laying birds fed such mouldy corn and the sequestering effect of three toxin adsorbents. There were eight dietary treatments; diets 1 to 4 contained clean corn supplemented with: no adsorbent, activated charcoal (CA¹) or either of the two other commercial adsorbents (CA² and CA³). Diets 5 to 8 contained mouldy corn diets with supplementation as stated for diets 1 to 4 and arranged in a 2x4 factorial layout; two corn types and four supplementations. The results showed that the activities of the fungi depleted the organic components - protein, lipid and the calories of the grains by 23%, 51% and 4.5% respectively while compensating in terms of total ash. The mould-contaminated diets significantly (P<0.05) decreased body weight gain (BWG) and Hen day production (HDP) while egg qualities and feed intake were not significantly (P>0.05) affected. There were depression (P<0.05) in haematological indices (erythrocytes, Haemoglobins and mean corpuscular volume) in birds subjected to contaminated diets. Higher (P<0.05) retention of urea and creatinine and high concentration of alanine and aspartate transaminases were observed in blood of birds on contaminated diets. The addition of the three adsorbents in mouldy diets improved BWG and HDP but birds on CA¹ compared more closely (P>0.05) with birds on clean corn diets. All the treatments were similar (P>0.05) in terms of egg quality measurements. The results indicated that mould in poultry feeds retard growth, egg production and impair feed conversion ratio, whereas the addition of 0.4% CA¹, CA² or CA³ reduced the adverse effects of mould contamination to varying extents, with CA¹ being the most effective adsorbent in this study