Effects of different adsorbents on the performance and liver parameters of broilers fed diets contaminated with aflatoxin.

The experiment was carried out to investigate the effect of aluminum silicate (AS), humic acid (HA), Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell wall (SC), herbal powder (HP) and a commercial toxin binder to alleviate the effects of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in broiler diet. In this experiment we used 320 day old chicks in a completely randomized design with 8 treatments and 4 replications, and 10 birds in each replicate, from 7 to 28 days of age. Experimental treatments were: 1) negative control (NC; without AFB1), 2) positive control (PC; contaminated by 0.3 mg AFB1 / kg diet), 3) PC + AS, 4) PC + AS + HA, 5) PC + AS + SC, 6) PC + AS + HA + SC, 7) PC + Magnotox as a commercial binder and 8) PC + HP. Feeding AFB1 contaminated diet reduced broiler performance, increased relative weights of liver, heart, pancreas and reduced serum albumin, total protein and glucose concentrations (P <0.05). Inclusion of AS in PC diet individually improved the negative effects of AFB1. However, supplementation of SC boosted AS effects, HA supplementation was rarely effective. Finally, it can be concluded that the combination of AS + SC has the highest adsorbing ability of AFB1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]