Evaluation of the Efficacy of a Commercial Hydrated Sodium Calcium Aluminosilicate to Reduce the Toxicity of Aflatoxin and Ochratoxin in Broiler Chicks

Two experiments were conducted to study the efficacy of a low inclusion commercialHSCAS (Myco-Ad) in preventing the deleterious effects of Aflatoxin B1 (AFB) andOchratoxin A (OCA) in broiler chicks. Arbor Acres broiler males individually cagedwere used in both experiments. The feed was experimentally contaminated with syntheticAFB or OCA from Sigma Labs, USA. In Experiment 1, 96 4-day-old chicks wererandomly assigned four dietary treatments with 24 replications each. T I was a sorghum-soybean meal control diet, T II control + 2.5 kg/mtMyco-Ad, T III control + 7.5 ppmAFB, and T IV control + 7.5 ppm AFB + 2.5 kg/mt Myco-Ad. At 24 days of age, birdsfed 7.5 ppm AFB contaminated diet showed severe macroscopic liver lesions, highermortality, lower body weight, poorer feed conversion, and higher liver weight than chicksfed the control diet. The addition of Myco-Ad significantly prevented the impairedperformance and the gross liver lesions observed in chicks fed AFB. In Experiment 2, 647-day-old chicks were randomly divided into four dietary treatments with 16 replicationseach. T I was a sorghum-soybean meal control diet, T II control + 2.5 kg/mtMyco-Ad,T III control + 2 ppm OCA, and T IV control + 2 ppm OCA + 2.5 kg/mtMyco-Ad.Feeding OCA contaminated diet plus Myco-Ad resulted in statistically significantheavier and more efficient broilers, with markedly reduced macroscopic kidney lesionsthan those fed 2 ppm OCA at 28 days of age. In both experiments, the addition of 2.5kg/mt of Myco-Ad to chick diets did not show any statistical difference in performancecompared to the control diet, demonstrating its lack of interference with the absorption ofnutrients. These results indicated that Myco-Ad at 2.5 kg/mt was effective in preventingthe toxic effects of AFB and OCA in broilers chicks.