What is Aflatoxin?

Since the late 1990s, the discussion of aflatoxin and other mycotoxins in wildlife feed has been in and out of the news spotlight. Aflatoxin is a toxic substance produced by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. This fungus commonly grows on corn, milo, feed pellets and cereal grains. There are at least eight other toxins that can grow on corn or feed pellets, but aflatoxin seems to be the most prevalent.

The United States Food and Drug Administration does not allow grain tested at more than 20 parts per billion to be fed to dairy cattle or to be used in grain products headed for human consumption. However, there are no regulations for use as wildlife feed, and the grain tested at or above 20 parts per billion is often used as wildlife feed.

How Aflatoxin Affects Wildlife

In the late 1990s Dr. Scott Henke and Dr. Alan Fedynich of Texas A&M University-Kingsville's Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute found that high levels of aflatoxin consumption by wildlife caused cancer, liver damage, immune system dysfunction, and left the animals in generally poor health. While Dr. Henke and Dr. Fedynich's research is among the first and most comprehensive study in the Aflatoxin arena, others have performed similar studies with similar conclusions.

Common Sense Is Sometimes Better Than Science

With the recent decline in quail numbers, it's only natural to ask what role Aflatoxin may be playing. Unfortunately, there has been little research on the causes of the shrinking quail population, primarily because it is difficult to isolate and quantify the effects of solitary influences on quail mortality. Quail that fall prey to predators leave little to no evidence of the cause of their death. One thing that goes undisputed however, is the fact that weakened quail are more susceptible to predators, and exposure to Aflatoxin certainly weakens quail.

How Has Deer Hunting Affected Quail?

It is hard to deny the correlation between the expansion of deer hunting and the decline of quail numbers. As deer numbers have increased moving westward, deer hunters have followed. More deer hunters mean more corn feeders. It is common sense to conclude that with several hundred million pounds of corn being fed, there has to be a higher incidence of tainted feed being consumed by all wildlife, including quail. This subject is discussed in a recent article by Ray Sasser, "Is Deer Corn a Quail Killer". The article discusses the relationship between the deer hunting influx and the decline of quail populations.

It is also interesting to note that over the last several years the optimistic reports of quail on the comeback in late summer have been quickly dampened by early fall when quail seem to mysteriously disappear. The timeliness of this is suspicious, to say the least, since most deer hunters usually switch from deer protein to corn in the early fall. Quail love corn. So what happens to all of those quail under the deer feeders?