**Animal Health**

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82 Ruminants - The Husbandry, Economic and Health Aspects

**Chapter 5**

**Provisional chapter**

**Dairy Cows Health Risk: Mycotoxins**

**Dairy Cows Health Risk: Mycotoxins**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.72709

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of mycotoxigenic fungi affecting both human and animal health. Their production in plants is highly unpredictable and dependent on a variety of factors, as well as the stage of the culture and transportation, storage and processing of the raw materials. One of the risks for dairy producers is animal exposure to mycotoxins. The scientific literature shows nonspecific signs to appear in a herd, most often when mycotoxins are present in feed and worse, in milk. In general, ruminants are considered resistant to the action of most mycotoxins, attitude explained by the detoxifying role of ruminal microsymbionts and especially protozoa. The clinical examination performed on the dairy cows from the studied farm did not reveal the presence of any symptom characteristic to mycoses or to mycotoxicosis. Although considered resistant to the action of mycotoxins, research reveals the constant presence of mycotoxigenic fungi and the mycotoxins they produce in the fodder of dairy cows, many times in various combinations. The incidence of mycotoxins is unpredictable and influenced by numerous factors (climatic, of production, transport, processing and storage of fodder). The health

of dairy cows is affected by the consumption of contaminated fodder.

**Keywords:** fungus, mycotoxins, dairy cows, milk, health

7698:1990, ISO 7954:1987 and ISO 13681:1995.

often with colored fruiting or sporing structures [1, 2].

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The notion of fungus refers to a large array of eukaryotic structures, unicellular or multicellular, as they are regulated through ISO 21527–1 and 21,527–2, which cancel and replace ISO

Molds are free of chlorophyll, mesophilic aerobic filamentous microorganisms which, on the surface of mycological agar medium, under some conditions (0.7–0.9 water activity (aw) and usually 25 ± 1°C temperature), develop flat or fluffy spreading propagules/germs or colonies

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72709

Violeta-Elena Simion

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

Violeta-Elena Simion

**Provisional chapter**
