Abstract:
A study was conducted to evaluate effect of replacing groundnut seed cake with yeast-noug seed cake (BYNSC) mixture on laying performance, egg quality, fertility and hatchability of white leghorn layer chickens. One hundred eighty white leghorn layers at the age of 28 weeks and average initial body weight of 1006±7.18 g (mean ± SD) in a completely randomized design were used. There were 5 treatment rations each with 3 replication and were randomly allotted to 15 pens each with 12 chicken + 2 cocks. The treatments were replacing groundnut meal (T1 (0% BYNSC+18% groundnut cake meal), T2 (4.5% BYNSC+13.5% groundnut cake meal), T3 (9% BDYNSC+9% groundnut cake meal), T4 (13.5% BYNSC+4.5% groundnut cake meal) and T5 (18% BYNSC+0% groundnut cake meal)). The result indicated that crude protein and metabolizable energy of BYNSC were 38.74% and 3153.07kcal ME/kg/DM, respectively. Daily dry matter intake was determined by subtracting ort collected from the feed offered. Body weight gain was calculated by subtracting initial weight from final body weight. Chicken fed T3 had significantly (P<0.001) greater dry matter (DM) intake (95.4±0.5) than T1 (91.3±0.3), T2 (92.4±0.8), T4 (89.2±0.9) and T5 (88.6±0.6). Layers fed T3 (259.4±20.6), T1 (237.9±29.4) and T2 (245.5ab±27.1) diets attained significantly (P<0.05) higher body weight than T4 (152.9±9.49) and T5 (182.8±28.6). There were no significant difference in body weight change among T1, T2 and T3. Chicken fed T3 (2.3±0.05) diet attained lowest (P<0.05) feed conversion rate than T4 (2.7±0.13) and T5 (2.8±0.11) but similar with T1 (2.6±0.03) and T2 (2.5±0.04). The HDEP was significantly (P<0.001) higher for layers fed T3 (65.5%) than T1 (58.2%), T4 (54.8%) and T5 (51.6%), while, the value for T2 and T3 did not differ. Egg weight was statistically similar (P>0.05) among the treatments. Except egg length and shape index, which was higher in T3 and T1, respectively all other external and internal egg quality parameters were similar. There was no difference (P>0.05) among treatments in egg albumen and yolk chemical composition, except carbohydrate content, which is greater in T5 than T3. Fertility, hatchability on fertile and total egg bases and embryo mortalities were no (P>0.05) different among treatments. Generally, replacing groundnut by BYNSC mixture up to 50% could increase egg productivity and profit without affecting quality of eggs.
