Effect of corn distillers dried grains with soluble with or without xylanase supplementation in laying hen diets on performance, egg quality and intestinal viscosity

Abstract

A 14-week experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of Corn Distillers Dried Grains with soluble (DDGS) with or without xylanase on layers" performance and egg quality traits as well as intestinal viscosity. Four hundred and eighty Atak-S Brown laying hens (32-weekold) were randomly distributed among the eight dietary treatments with six replicates of ten birds each. There was no significant (P>0.05) interaction between DDGS levels and enzyme supplementation for any of the studied parameters (P>0.05). The addition of either 0.0, 10.0, 20.0 or 30.0% DDGS to the diet had no significant (P>0.05) effect on egg production, egg weight, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, body weight gain, livability, eggshell braking strength, eggshell thickness, eggshell ratio, egg albumen height and haugh unit. The addition of any level of DDGS positively affected egg yolk color. On the other hand, 30% of DDGS in the diet caused a significant (P<0.05) decrease in egg mass. The supplementation of enzyme to diets significantly (P<0.05) increased the percentage of egg production. In addition, enzyme supplementation resulted an overall reduction in intestinal viscosity. So, it can be concluded that up to 20% DDGS can be used in laying hen nutrition without adversely affecting any of performance and egg quality parameters, besides xylanase based enzyme supplementation could improve egg production and decrease intestinal viscosity regardless of the inclusion rate of DDGS.

Keywords

• laying hens
• ddgs
• xylanase
• egg production
• egg quality
• viscosity