Utilization of sweet potato in the diet on productive performance and egg quality of laying hens

Abstract

The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the effect of sweet potato in the diet on productive performance and egg quality of laying hens. Under a completely randomized design (CRD) hens were arranged into 4 groups. Group 1 was control diet (un-using sweet potato in the diet) (T1) and group 2, 3 and 4 were fed diet supplemented with 10% (T2), 20% (T3) and 30% (T4) of sweet potato in the diet, respectively. One hundred and twenty eighth lying hens, 61 week-old, were divided into 4 groups with 4 replicates, each replicate consisted of 8 hens and animals were fed 130 g/bird/day of concentrate and water was given freely. The each of experiment was used 63 days. The results found that using sweet potato at 20 and 30% in the diet decreased egg percentage (p<0.05), while no affected on 10% group when compared with control group. The average of egg weight, egg white weight, yolk weight, shell weight and thick shell were similar all treatment (p>0.05). Moreover, the yellowness (b*) of egg was decreased in 30% in the diet and was not affected in the lightness (L*) and redness (a*) of all treatments. The feed intake and feed conversion ratio were not different among treatments. Furthermore, hen-day of egg was reduced in 20 and 30% groups (p<0.05). Therefore, the experiment suggested that sweet potato can be used at 10% for mixing in the diet for laying hens without negative affect on feed intake and improved egg production and egg quality.