Mycotoxins are secondary fungal metabolites of structurally diverse groups occurring worldwide as contaminants of cereals such as wheat, corn, maize, peanut, and barley, which comprise the main ingredients of poultry diets. Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) has wide range of beneficial properties, including data showing its positive effects in protecting the liver of birds exposed to aflatoxins. Trials have shown that in broilers affected by aflatoxicosis, which adversely affected feed intake, weight gain, feed efficiency, serum biochemistry and immune status, supplementation of diets with silymarin reduced the detrimental effects, thereby improving the productivity and health. Although promising results have been reported, established doses and further research on the standardisation of this herb will increase its uses as alternative to synthetic drugs. The following review discusses several important aspects of the beneficial properties of milk thistle on poultry growth performance in experimentally induced aflatoxicosis.

Zeolites are crystalline, hydrated aluminosilicates of alkali and alkaline earth cations which have infinite, three dimensional structure. Among many properties attributed to zeolites, two most characteristics that relates to their effectiveness in animal nutrition are their ability to lose and gain water reversibly and being capable of exchanging selectively a variety of cations in their structure without much major changes of structure. However the effect of zeolites on food intake, weight gain, growth rate, egg production, egg weight, shell thickness and internal egg characteristic are in dispute. While some of the experiments report beneficial effect due to inclusion of zeolite in the diet of birds, others show no changes and yet there are results that indicate the negative effects. Reasons such as level of usage, type of zeolite (natural vs. synthetics) and even within natural ones, the levels of impurities, are to be blamed for discrepancies reported from the experiments. On the other hand there has been evidence that zeolites has beneficial effect on feed efficiency ratio, water consumption, nutrient utilization, manure and litter condition and more importantly on aflatoxicosis.