The effect of feeding diets containing deoxynivalenol contaminated corn on channel catfish ( I ctalurus punctatus ) challenged with E dwardsiella ictaluri

Channel catfish were fed practical corn‐soybean meal diets for 10 weeks that contained various weighed amounts of ground, dried field corn contaminated with 20 mg deoxynivalenol ( DON ) kg −1 . Weighed amounts of DON corn were blended with weighed amounts of ground, clean corn that contained no DON (0 mg kg −1 ) to yield five diets that had 0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 mg DON  kg −1 of diet. Results show that catfish fed diets that contained DON for 7 weeks did not experience lower weight gains or poorer feed conversion ratios that were significantly ( P  > 0.05) different from control‐fed fish. Mortality of catfish during the 21‐day post‐challenge period indicate that catfish fed diets containing DON ‐contaminated corn that provided at least 5.0 mg DON  kg −1 of diet had significantly ( P  < 0.05) lower mortality than catfish fed the control diet or the diet that provided 2.5 mg DON  kg −1 of diet. The presence of DON ‐contaminated corn in the experimental diets did not significantly ( P  > 0.05) alter fish body weight gains and appeared to provide a protective effect for channel catfish challenged with the pathogenic bacterium E dwardsiella ictaluri .