Performance and egg quality characteristics of commercial layers responses to vitamin-mineral premixes

Abstract

Ninety-six point of lay (20 weeks) ISA Brown strain of layers was used to compare their productive response and egg quality characteristics to four commercial vitamin-mineral premises. The birds were fed on isocaloric and isonitrogenous diets supplemented with four different vitamin mineral premises labeled as VMP1, VMP2, VMP3 and VMP4. There were eight birds per replicate and three replicate per treatment making a total of 24 birds per treatment in a complete randomized design. Collection of data on eggs was done for 10 weeks. Three eggs were picked per replicate on a weekly basis for analysis. Results shows that the daily weight changes, egg feed price ratio, hen day egg production, shell weight, percentage yolk weight, yolk percentage, shell surface area, yolk height and feed efficiency per dozen egg were significantly (P<0.05) affected by the dietary treatments but egg mass, egg weight daily feed intake, feed conversion per kg egg weight, egg width, egg length, shell thickness, egg shell index, albumen length, albumen weight, albumen percentage weight, yolk index and feed conversion per kg egg mass were not significantly (P>0.05) influenced by the varied dietary Treatments. It was concluded that the four vitamin and mineral premises used in this study did not adversely affect the external and internal egg parameters. However, VMP3 gave better hen day egg production but the efficacy of all commercial premixes in terms of egg weight and egg mass are the same.

. Brown egg-type,