Slide 1 Hello. This is Hans Stein. I am an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois in the Department of Animal Sciences. I would like to visit with you today about some of the challenges that we have encountered this year in terms of feeding grain that is infected with mycotoxins to swine. Slide 2 These mycotoxins are produced in the grain, and you'll often hear that we have ear rot in the grain. There are several different types of ear rot, and the different types of ear rot may result in different toxins being produced. As an example, Giberella ear rot will result in production of zearalenon and also vomitoxin in corn, and Fusarium ear rot will result in production of fumonisin, the Penicillium ear rot will result in production of ochratoxin in the grain, and finally we have also Aspergillus, that will result in aflatoxin production in the grain. Slide 3 Now, the first thing to do if you have infected grain is to make sure the grain is very well cleaned -- and you may want to use the aspirators pretty heavily to get it cleaned as best you can -- and then get it dried down to preferably less than 15% moisture. And also if you can cool it down to less than 45 degrees Fahrenheit, that will prevent any further growth of toxins in the grain. So the first objective is, if you have infected grain, to stop the growth of toxins, and the best way is to get it cooled down to less than 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, the next question is, how do you feed this infected grain? And, the only way you can feed it is to make sure that the feed that you produce with this grain has levels of mycotoxins that do not exceed the limits for what pigs can tolerate. And these limits are different for the different toxins that we are dealing with. This year, we do not see a lot of aflatoxins in our grain. The reason is that aflatoxin is mainly produced when the temperatures are relatively high, and under dry conditions, and that is certainly not what we have seen in Illinois this year. So, we don't have a lot of aflatoxins, but if you have aflatoxin in the grain, we have a recommended limit of 20 parts per billion in the feed that we feed to our pigs. So if, for example, you have corn that contains 100 parts per billion of aflatoxin, then you cannot include more than 20% of that corn in the diet to get down to the 20 parts per billion limit. Slide 4 What we see a lot of this year is vomitoxin, also called DON, and pigs are very susceptible to vomitoxin, and it will reduce feed intake if we have just 2 to 3 parts per million of vomitoxin in the diets. It's easy to see if pigs are fed grain containing vomitoxins because you will see a lot of vomiting, and sometimes pigs will also get diarrhea. The recommendation is that the complete diet cannot include more than 1 part per million of vomitoxins, and in fact if you're trading wheat or wheat by-products, there's a legal limit of 4 parts per million of vomitoxins in that grain. The diets fed to pigs can include up to 1 part per million; if you have more than that, you need to blend it down. Slide 5 We also see quite a bit of zearalenon this year in our corn and other grains, and zearalenon is a group of estrogenic compounds. Pigs are very sensitive to zearalenon, and you easily see that in female pigs because they get swollen vulvas if they consume grain that contains zearalenon. And levels of 1.5 to 2 parts per million will give this response. If you feed more than 10 parts per million of zearalenon to sows, you will see increased weaning to mating intervals, delayed returns to estrus and increased embryo mortality. The recommendation is that we cannot feed any zearalenon infected grain to our breeding herd. We can't feed it to the breeding boars, you can't feed it to the developing gilts, and you can't feed it to gestating or lactating sows. If you do have zearalenon infected grain, then you may be able to feed it to growing-finishing pigs, and they may tolerate up to at least 2 parts per million in the complete diet before you'll see any reduction in feed intake. So zearalenon is very serious, and we don't want to feed that to our breeding animals. Slide 6 We also see fumonisin in some of our grains this year, and fumonisin is a common description of several different compounds. Consumption of fumonisin infected grain may result in damage to the liver, to the lungs, and to the pancreas of the pigs. The maximum level that we can tolerate in diets fed to pigs is 10 parts per million. If you have grain that contains fumonisin in concentrations greater than 10 parts per million, it has to be blended down so that you get down to the 10 parts per million in the complete diet. Slide 7 This year, we have also heard reports of ochratoxin in corn. Ochratoxin is a toxin that is often found in barley, but this year, as mentioned, it has also been observed in corn. This toxin can be produced if the grain is not properly cooled. That's the reason we need to cool the grain down to 45 degrees Fahrenheit, because otherwise we can get more ochratoxins produced. Acute toxicity of ochratoxin has been observed when diets have contained between 1 and 6 mg/kg body weight of the pigs. And reduced performance has been observed if we've had 1.4 parts per million in the complete diet. So the recommendation for ochratoxin is that the final diets, they need to contain less than 1 part per million of ochratoxin. If we are below that level, we do not expect to see any adverse effects in our pigs, but if we're above that level, we will see some reduced performance in the pigs. Slide 8 So these are the main toxins that we deal with and we have observed this year. I mentioned at the beginning that we see quite a bit of ear rot in our grains, and one of the most common ear rots we've seen this year is Diploidia. And Diplodia ear rot is not toxic to pigs, so that's the good news about Diplodia. It doesn't produce any toxins; however, Diplodia will often result in lower test weights of the grain and there are reports that sometimes pigs will reduce feed intake if you feed them Diplodia infected grain. It is also likely that the energy value of Diplodia infected grain is less than in non-infected grain because of the lower test weights. The recommendation is that you can feed Diplodia infected grain to pigs; however, it should be well cleaned and if you can, then try to blend it down the best that is possible to avoid the problems with reduced feed intake of pigs fed Diplodia infected grain. Slide 9 In general, the recommendation for all infected grain is to get it cleaned and dried very carefully, store at temperatures of less than 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and then if the levels of toxins exceed what is recommended to include in the final diet, then you will have to blend it down with non-contaminated grain. And specifically for zearalenon, you cannot feed that to any breeding animals. Slide 10 These are our general recommendations for feeding mycotoxin-infected grain to swine. We hope this information has been helpful. If you are interested in more information about mycotoxins or other nutrition-related topics in swine, please go to nutrition.ansci.illinois.edu. There you will find all the information that we have put online about nutrition from our Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory. This is Hans Stein, Associate Professor of Swine Nutrition in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois.