There is a lot to prepare for before opening a new silage pile that was just harvested. This includes evaluating starch content and digestibility to determine potential commodity needs, as well as estimating tonnage for next year’s corn silage acres. If you also took green chop samples and sent them in for mycotoxin analysis and found that the crop contains multiple mycotoxins this year, you’ll also be preparing your mycotoxin mitigation strategy.
Clay-based feed additives have historically been a go-to for ‘insurance’ in dairy cattle rations with the goal of covering for unknown mycotoxin concentrations in the diets. Unfortunately, clay-based products are best used for aflatoxin but have limited efficacy on the other major mycotoxins. To make up for this deficiency, some products include yeast cell wall to provide beta-glucans, which have some ability to bind zearalenone but are less effective against most other mycotoxins. The yeast cell wall’s ability to bind zearalenone is minimal, and in a best-case scenario, it binds about 50% of the zearalenone.
Unfortunately, no product effectively binds DON, the most common mycotoxin, and the same is true for fumonisin and T2/HT2, which is becoming increasingly common throughout the mid-Atlantic.
Of the corn silage samples analyzed for mycotoxins by Agrarian Solutions last year, 95% had more than one mycotoxin. The majority contained DON plus one or more others, typically a mixture of Zearalenone, T2/HT2, and Fumonisin. Both ruminant and nonruminant research has repeatedly shown the cumulative negative effects of multiple mycotoxins. The mode of action of each mycotoxin builds on each other, especially when DON is present to break down the intestinal cell wall and allow other mycotoxins an easy way in. A strategy needs to be in place to defend against all the common mycotoxins in the ration.
DTX™ is specifically designed to combat all the major mycotoxins beginning with Agrarian Solution’s proprietary bacteria technology. Instead of trying to bind the mycotoxins, which is only marginally affective in the best case, DTX works at the intestinal level to protect the epithelial cells, the “castle wall”, against mycotoxins, pathogens and digesta trying to enter the body. The phytogenic technology in DTX strengthens intestinal tight junctions while providing powerful antioxidant support for liver health. These three modes of action help the cow defend against mycotoxins in the gut and protect the liver from damage.
DTX is research-proven to protect against DON, the most prevalent mycotoxin, as well as the other mycotoxins increasingly seen in North America. Decades of on-farm experience in dairy diets show dairy nutritionists and producers that whether there is one mycotoxin in the diet, or several, DTX is the product you can rely on to defend and protect the cow against the challenge. Defend and protect is not just a motto – it is how DTX Concentrate works.
Authors: Caroline Knoblock, MSc, – Director of Nutrition, Agrarian Solutions and Larry Roth, Ph.D., PAS – Vice President of Nutrition
