Hen mysteriously died. Can mold contaminate a 50lb bag of corn?

[kuntrygirl]

Quote:
hey girl. long time no see. how ya been? where is Atlas? i have never heard of that store.

 

[kuntrygirl]

I threw away a bag of feed that had been sitting in my barn for a while and termites had gotten in to it and it looked like I saw rat droppings around it. Someone told me that I should have fed it to the chickens because they love termites. Is this true? Did I do the right thing by throwing out the feed that had termites in it or could the chickens have eaten the feed?

 

[A.T. Hagan]

There isn't any way to know for sure. She may have died for completely unrelated reasons.

But birds are particularly sensitive to mycotoxins (fungal toxins) and moldy corn can be bad for the stuff if it's gotten too damp at some time in the past. Finding a number of bags with green mold in them seems particularly suggestive to me.

For future reference NEVER feed moldy grain to your animals. Short of lab testing there isn't any good way to know if that particular mold has produced mycotoxins. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. It's not worth the risk. Mycotoxins are not always acutely toxic as in kills the bird quickly. Many of them are carcinogenic or teratogenic in nature and some of them can be passed back to you through their eggs. Much the same for feeding moldy anything to dairy animals for the same reasons.

When I have moldy feed I either take it back immediately or use it for fertilizer. For you folks who buy deer corn for your birds check the tags carefully for mycotoxin surveys. Aflatoxin is about the most common of them and if it contains more than 20ppb (parts per billion) then pass it by.