IMPROVEMENT OF LAYING HEN PERFORMANCES BY DIETARY MANNANOLIGOSACCHARIDES SUPPLEMENTATION
Cristina Gabriela Radu-Rusu, I.M. Pop
Abstract
The goals of the study were to assess the effects of prebiotic mannanoligosaccharides feed additive on the performance and egg quality of commercial laying hens approaching the end of the laying period. The trial was setup at the Animal Husbandry Faculty's Experimental Farm in Iasi, Romania, during a 4 weeks period. The biological material consisted in 60 hens, 57 week old ISA Brown. The control group (30 hens) was fed with standard layer mixed feed, meaning a corn-soybean meal basal diet while the experimental treatment (30 hens) classic feed was supplemented with 0.1% prebiotic of mannanoligosaccharides kind (treatment A1). Several parameters were studied: hens living weight and feed intake dynamics, feed conversion ratio, laying intensity, egg mass production, eggs and eggshell weight, eggshell thickness, shell index, shell breaking strength, eggs with unconformities. The laying hens in the experimental group, whose fed was supplemented with prebiotic, gave higher performances, concerning the production parameters (laying intensity: +2.2%; egg mass production: +1.7%; feed conversion: -2.0%) and the shell quality (weight: +3.6%; thickness: +3.9%, breaking strength: +5.9%, eggs unconformities: -55.5%).
