The Effects of Feeding a Whole-in-Shell Peanut-Containing Diet on Layer Performance and the Quality and Chemistry of Eggs Produced

Abstract

The abundance of peanut and poultry production within the state of North Carolina and the US Southeast, led us to conduct a layer feeding trial to determine the utilization of whole-in-shell high-oleic peanuts (WPN) and/or unblanched high-oleic peanuts (HOPN) as an alternative feed ingredient for poultry. To meet this objective, we randomly assigned 576 shaver hens to 4 dietary treatments (4 rep/trt). The dietary treatments consisted of a conventional control diet (C1), a diet containing 4% WPN, an 8% HOPN diet, and a control diet containing soy protein isolate (C2). Feed and water were provided for 6 weeks ad libitum. Pen body weights (BW) were recorded at week 0 and week 6 (wk6), and feed weights were recorded bi-weekly. Shell eggs were collected daily and enumerated. Bi-weekly 120 eggs/treatment were collected for quality assessment and egg weight (EW), while 16 eggs/treatment were collected for chemical analysis. There were no significant differences in BW or EW at week 6. Hens fed the C2 produced more total dozen eggs relative to C1 hens over the feeding trial (p p p p p < 0.05). In summary, this study suggests that WPN and/or HOPN may be a suitable alternative layer feed ingredient and a dietary means to enrich the eggs produced while not adversely affecting hen performance.

Keywords

• alternative poultry feed ingredients
• high-oleic peanuts
• whole-in-shell peanuts
• layers
• shell eggs