The efficacy of bentonite and zeolite in reducing aflatoxin B1 toxicity on production performance and intestinal and hepatic health of broiler chickens

This research aimed to assess the influences of bentonite (BN) and zeolite (ZE) on reducing toxic influences of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in broilers by examining growth performance, carcase characteristics, serum indices, ileum morphology, apparent nutrient digestibility, and liver AFB1 residues. In total, 360 11-d-old straight-run broilers (Ross 308) were randomly allocated into 6 dietary treatments, with 10 replications of 6 birds each, in a 20-d experiment. The treatments were as follows: standard basal diet (negative control, NC); NC + 0.25 mg/kg AFB1 (positive control, PC); NC + 0.4% BN; NC + 0.4% ZE; PC + 0.4% BN; PC + 0.4% ZE. Compared to the NC diet, feeding the PC diet decreased daily feed intake (DFI) during the grower and overall periods (p < .01), reduced daily weight gain (DWG) and production efficiency factor (PEF) and increased feed conversion ratio (FCR) during grower, finisher, and overall periods (p < .001), lowered breast meat yield (p < .01), diminished dressing percentage, serum concentrations of total protein (TP), albumin (ALB), glucose (GLU), total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), and total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD), villus height (VH), villus surface area (VSA), apparent digestibility of crude protein (CP) and ether extract (EE), apparent metabolisable energy (AME), and nitrogen-corrected AME (AMEn) (p < .001), and raised proportional liver weight, serum activities of glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT) and glutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT), and residues of AFB1 in the liver (p < .001). Compared to the PC diet, feeding the PC + 0.4% BN or PC + 0.4% ZE diets increased DWG and PEF and decreased FCR during finisher and overall periods, raised dressing percentage, serum levels of TP, GLU, T-AOC, and T-SOD, apparent CP digestibility, and reduced proportional liver weight and AFB1 residues in the liver (p < .001). Moreover, feeding the PC + 0.4% BN diet increased VH, VSA, apparent EE digestibility, AME, and AMEn, and decreased serum GOT and GPT activities when compared to the PC diet (p < .001). Whereas, feeding the PC + 0.4% ZE diet increased DFI during all experimental periods (p < .05) and DWG and PEF during the grower period (p < .001) as compared to the PC diet. To conclude, our findings demonstrate that dietary addition of 4 g/kg BN can deliver a better safeguard against the adverse influences of AFB1 in broiler chickens.