 Hi, my name is Raquel Dugan-Debel. I'm the McHenry County Extension Agent. The cool wet summer of 2009 has created a lot of challenges for livestock crop producers. Today I want to talk about some of those issues such as feeding moldy corn. As you can see from this sample, it's high at evidence of certain molds that have shown up in our corn. And today we'll discuss the differences between molds and microtoxins. Moldy or musty feed is undesirable for a number of reasons. First of all, mold tends to reduce the palatability of feed. We can see instances where cattle even turn away from moldy feed. As palatability is reduced and intakes are reduced, we will tend to see reductions in performance, either gain in feeder cattle or milk production in dairy cattle. Typically digestibility with visible molds can be reduced by about 5%. That may be an understated amount if we get some quite severely musty moldy feed. Digestibility may be reduced by 10% or even greater. In addition to less palatability and less intake, we can also create some health concerns such as myotic abortions where the spore load is so high in the system that we end up aborting calves. It can also be an irritant which causes some respiratory disease or opens up the door for other and additional respiratory infections. Not all moldy feed will contain mycotoxins, but that's probably our biggest concern is when some of the molds that are present produce a toxin in the feed which has more direct effects on animal performance and health. A lot of times when cattle get introduced to microtoxins in their feed some of the problems are a little slow to start up but they accumulate and become worse over time. We can get to severe situations of animal death. We can have diarrhea and hemorrhaging. Or we can have estrogenic effects from some of our mold microtoxins that result in prolapse, abortion, and other reproductive failures. First of all we have the condition of a lot of field corn with moistures well above 20% and we got a period of some temperatures that were above 45 degrees and in that kind of environmental condition a lot of ear mold was favored in the crop out in the field. Various kinds of molds were present and we were seeing things of black city molds to white fuzzy molds to greenish colored molds to pink molds, red colored kernels, and so forth. These various kinds of molds are associated with different potential mycotoxin production and different potential health hazards to animals. A lot of the common molds such as this cladiosporium were probably mostly a surface mold living off some of the dead tissue on the plant and probably quite harmless and not associated with a lot of production of mycotoxin. Some of the fusarium ear molds which are more characteristic of some of the red or pink or fluffy white appearances were associated with at least some vomitoxin production and probably some zirallanone and some other mycotoxins in small levels. It's not a very good indicator just visually how dangerous a mold might be in feed. The appearance looks different from time to time and their potential produced mycotoxins varies with environmental conditions. These pictures here showing some molds as this fusarium ear mold were provided or obtained from the South Dakota State University Plant Diagnostic. Gibrala characteristically has the purple or pink kernels on it and it is commonly associated with some mycotoxin production. Ruminant animals are a bit unique in their ability to handle some of the molds and mycotoxins in their diet. Some of these chemicals or compounds are actually broken down, degraded in the rumen and so they can tolerate at least some level but the effects can be highly variable depending on the concentration in the feed and the kind level of the mycotoxin present. We tend to have more problems in cattle if they're under stress already from weather or health and also for a high producing animal such as dairy cattle or feedlot cattle on finishing type rations. What we want to keep in mind here is if there's some concern with the feed to obtain a test on it. Also we want to make sure if we're using some moldy feed in the ration and we've probably diluted it down with better feeds or given the animals a chance to at least waste or rummage through some if it's like forages and so forth. And then of course always observe these cattle closely. If we see some signs of lack of appetite, some diarrhea or some hemorrhaging we certainly need to be concerned and take it out of the ration. One of the things with this corn is if we do ensile it or store it properly we can probably arrest the growth of further molds and hold levels at where they're at. If we do a poor job in storing some high moisture corn if we had a test initially we could have continued growth and mycotoxin levels or health effects could change over. So if you need to get a mycotoxin analysis on some moldy corn or moldy feed you should be able to take a couple quart sample of the feed and send it into a lab. The NDSU veterinary toxicology lab can be used as a means to test feed. It will cost you approximately $90 to do a mycotoxin screen. The feed if it's wet would probably have to be sent a direct delivery type system overnight to do that. There's also a number of commercial labs such as Dairyland that also offer mycotoxin screening and analysis. It's been kind of encouraged from the tests that have been done on North Dakota corn samples this fall that there has been relatively low levels of mycotoxins present. There has been some level of vomitoxin, some small trace levels that are all known and a little bit of T2 and fimosin in some of the feed. Generally these have been at only about a part per million well within the guidelines for feeding to cattle. That doesn't mean that every sample is safe and I still suggest if you've got concerns to get your own feed tested. We know from some feeding trials in North Dakota that we can feed a total ration level of five parts per million of vomitoxin without any deleterious effects in gestating cows or feeder cattle. We also know that some of these mycotoxins certainly need to be restricted to even lower levels if the ration is going into poultry or swine. If you are interested in additional information or have specific concerns about an analysis you've gotten or would like a feed tested and help in getting that tested, feel free to contact County Extension Agent or Raquel Dugendibble over at McHenry County Extension Agent at her number of 537-5405. Feel also free to call me. I'm John DuVitter, area livestock specialist at the North Central Research Extension Center at 857-7682.