Morteza Rezaei; abolfazl zarei; Majhd Afshar; Ehsan Rahimi
Abstract
This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of different levels of dietary natural pigments from marigolds and red pepper on performance and egg qualitative characteristics of laying hens. A total of 96 hy-line W-36 laying hens were used in a completely randomized design in six treatments and four ...
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This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of different levels of dietary natural pigments from marigolds and red pepper on performance and egg qualitative characteristics of laying hens. A total of 96 hy-line W-36 laying hens were used in a completely randomized design in six treatments and four replications of four birds in each from 77 to 85 weeks of age. The performance and egg qualitative characteristics were examined during experimental period. The results showed that the effect of natural pigments utilization from plants marigolds and red pepper was significant (p < 0.05) on feed conversion ratio, egg production percentage and egg mass, however it did not have any significant effect on feed intake and average egg weight (P>0.05). Also, the effect of experimental treatments was not significant on egg qualitative traits, including albumen height, Haugh unit, yolk height and yolk index (P>0.05), but it had highly significant effect on yolk color (p < 0.001). According to the results of this experiment, it seems that the utilization of natural pigments from plants marigolds and red pepper each by amount 2gr/kg of laying hens diet have an effective role in increasing egg yolk color and marketing without any adverse effect on performance indices and egg qualitative characteristics.
M. Oftadeh; M. Bashtani; N. Afzali; H. Farhangfar; M.R. Asghari
Abstract
In a completely randomized design with factorial arrangement (2×4), 192 White-Hyline laying hens at the age of 38 weeks were used. Treatments were four basal diets including 0, 10, 15 and 20 percent of wheat bran each with (0.05 percent) or ...
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In a completely randomized design with factorial arrangement (2×4), 192 White-Hyline laying hens at the age of 38 weeks were used. Treatments were four basal diets including 0, 10, 15 and 20 percent of wheat bran each with (0.05 percent) or without multi-purpose enzyme that were tested for a period of 84 days experiment. The enzyme consisted of Rovabioexel containing xylanase 2200 unit/g, beta gluconase 200 unit/g, cellulase 100 unit/g and pectinase 100 unit/g. The results indicated that diets contained 10 and 20 percent wheat bran had the highest and lowest egg production percentage (P<0.05) respectively. Increasing the level of wheat bran up to 20 percent led to a decrease in daily feed consumption (P<0.05). Egg weight, egg mass and feed conversion ratio were not significantly affected by the levels of wheat bran and enzyme. Furthermore, egg quality traits such as egg shape index, albumen quality (Hugh unit), yolk color index, percentages of yolk and albumen, as well as egg shell thickness were not significantly affected by the levels of wheat bran and enzyme. Based upon the results of this experiment, 10 percent of wheat bran is an appropriate level which could be used in the diet of laying hens
