The influence of different single dietary sources on moult induction in laying hens

Abstract

An investigation was carried out to assess the possibility of using single dietary sources as alternatives to feed deprivation for the induction of moult in commercial laying hens. The study involved six dietary groups of 29 laying hens: unmoulted, dried tomato pomace, alfalfa meal, rice bran, cumin seed meal and feed withdrawal. The birds received the above diets during the moulting period (11 days), and body weight loss and ovary weight regression were measured. Post-moult production parameters (number of eggs produced per hen per day, egg weight, shell weight, yolk colour and Haugh unit) were measured for 12 weeks. Results showed that all dietary sources were as effective as feed withdrawal in causing ovary weight regression in birds. Birds provided with tomato pomace or alfalfa showed lower weight losses than feed-deprived birds at the end of the moulting period. Hens moulted by tomato pomace or alfalfa exhibited post-moult levels of egg production over a 12 week period that were superior to those of hens moulted by feed withdrawal. Post-moult eggs laid by hens moulted by all dietary sources were of comparable quality to eggs from feed-deprived hens and superior to those from unmoulted hens. As fibrous feeds with low metabolisable energy and an appreciable amount of protein, dried tomato pomace and alfalfa meal may be fed to hens on an ad libitum basis for effective moult induction while reducing the stress of severe starvation and retaining comparable egg quality and production. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry.

Tomato pomace and safflower meal as ingredients in non-feed-removal molt diets

“…Our results support the findings of others who reported that molted hens produce eggs with higher HU than do unmolted ones [42]. Mean premolt egg HU of 67.07 ± 1.74 increased for all treatment groups during the molt phase (Table 3 and Figure 1f).…”

“…Although hens in our study lost BW during the molt and regained it during postmolt, examination of the reproductive tracts was not performed. Mansoori et al [42] reported that feeding hens dried tomato pomace resulted in postmolt egg quality and egg production comparable with feed removal. The hens used in our study were most likely too old to show the type of enhanced production observed with the younger layers used by Mansoori et al [42].…”

“…Because tomato pomace is high in fiber and relatively low in digestible nutrients (Table 1), it may be useful for short-term consumption to induce molting [36,37,[39][40][41]. Other investigators showed that compared with feed deprivation, dried tomato pomace produced less BW loss during molting and comparable egg quality and production after molting [42].…”

“…Except for BW gain and the specific gravity of eggs, no significant differences in performance and egg quality measurements were noted when laying hens received a basal corn and soybean meal diet with substitutions of 0, 4, 7, and 10% safflower meal [50]. On the basis of previous results for tomato pomace [41,42] and safflower meal [50] obtained in other regions of the world, measurements from hens fed diets with these ingredients may compare favorably with those fed a noadded-salt non-feed-removal diet [51]. Thus, the objective of the present work was to determine several molt and postmolt production measurements of third-cycle Single Comb White Leghorn hens receiving ad libitum quantities of either a cracked corn-and soybean meal-based control diet, a cracked corn meal-based diet with no added salt (low salt), a low-salt diet with safflower meal, or a low-salt diet with tomato pomace.…”

Removal of Excess Cellulose and Associated Polysaccharides in Fruit and Vegetable By-Products – Implication for Use in Feed for Monogastric Farm Animals

“…Guar meal (10 and 15%) (Zimmerman et al, 1987), grape pomace with added thyroxin (Keshavarz and Quimby, 2002), various combinations of alfalfa (Landers et al, 2005;Donaldson 2005), and cottonseed meal (Davis et al, 2002) were also evaluated. Coconut meal and cumin seed meal were successfully used in layer and nonfeed-removal molt diets in Asian and Middle Eastern countries (Ravindran and Blaire, 1992;Mansoori 2007 …”