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Effects of Sunflower Meal Supplementation as a Complementary Protein Source in the Laying Hen’s Diet on Productive Performance, Egg Quality, and Nutrient Digestibility
- Source :
- Sustainability, Vol 13, Iss 3557, p 3557 (2021), Sustainability, Volume 13, Issue 6
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- MDPI AG, 2021.
-
Abstract
- The practical usage of untraditional feedstuffs such as sunflower meal (SFM) in laying hens nutrition in developing countries has received considerable attention. SFM is a by-product of the sunflower oil industry and has been progressively added to bird’s diets. Sunflower meal (SFM) is gaining great interest as a feed ingredient due to its eminent crude protein content, low anti-nutritional compounds, and low price. The current experiment was aimed to assess the production efficiency, egg quality, yolk fatty acids composition, and nutrient digestibility of laying hens fed SFM. A total of 162 Bovans Brown laying hens aged 60 weeks old were randomly allocated using a completely randomized design into three experimental groups of nine replicates each (n = six/replicate) for eight weeks. The dietary treatments involved a control (basal diet) and two levels of SFM, 50 and 100 g/kg feed. The dietary treatments did not influence live weight gain, feed intake, and egg mass. On one hand, the laying rate was increased<br />on the other hand, the feed conversion ratio and broken eggs rate of laying hens were decreased (p &lt<br />0.05) by the dietary inclusion of SFM. Dietary treatments had no effect on the egg’s quality characteristics except the yolk color and yolk height were larger (p = 0.01) for laying hens fed SFM compared with those fed the control. Dietary inclusion of SFM decreased (p &lt<br />0.05) the content of cholesterol in the egg yolk. Still, it increased the yolk contents of vitamin E, calcium, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, and oleic acid (p &lt<br />0.05). Furthermore, the dietary inclusion of SFM increased crude protein and calcium digestibility, but decreased the ether extract digestibility. In conclusion, our results suggested that the dietary inclusion of SFM, up to 100 g/kg at a late phase of laying, could improve the production performance, some of the egg quality traits, and nutrient digestibility while decreasing egg yolk cholesterol.
- Subjects :
- food.ingredient
040301 veterinary sciences
Linolenic acid
Linoleic acid
medicine.medical_treatment
Geography, Planning and Development
yolk cholesterol
egg quality
TJ807-830
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Biology
TD194-195
Feed conversion ratio
Renewable energy sources
0403 veterinary science
chemistry.chemical_compound
Animal science
food
sunflower meal
Yolk
medicine
GE1-350
Meal
Environmental effects of industries and plants
Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Vitamin E
Sunflower oil
laying hens
0402 animal and dairy science
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
040201 dairy & animal science
Sunflower
Environmental sciences
chemistry
yolk fatty acids
performance
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 20711050
- Volume :
- 13
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Sustainability
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3fc22df2e2353a31346a146fcd9e6c81