Abstract

TASAYCO, Elías Salvador; LINARES, Raiza Lorena Osorio; HUAMAN, Dante Fermin Calderón  and  MOSCOSO, Domingo Jesús Cabel. Metabolizable energy levels in the diet and performance of older laying hens. Rev. Inv. Cs. Agro. y Vet. [online]. 2023, vol.7, n.21, pp.539-546.  Epub Sep 25, 2023. ISSN 2664-0902.  https://doi.org/10.33996/revistaalfa.v7i21.234.

Current laying hens demonstrate a good productive response and an extension of their laying period. There is no information on the optimal energy density of diets in the period from 80 to 95 weeks of age. It is necessary to study the behavior of older laying hens. Objective. To evaluate the effect of 3 levels of metabolizable energy (ME) on productive performance and egg quality of older laying hens. Materials and Methods. One hundred and twenty 80-week-old Lohmann Brown hens were used. Treatments were randomly assigned under a randomized complete block design. The ME levels were: 2616, 2725 and 2834 Kcal of ME/kg, with five replicates each. Productive performance and egg quality characteristics were evaluated. The GLM procedure of SAS v 9.4 was used for statistical analysis of the data. Results. They indicate that ME levels did not significantly affect (P>0.05) the characteristics of productive performance and egg quality except for yolk index which was lower for the 2616 Kcal ME/Kg level. Conclusions. Older laying hens have a good physiological capacity to adapt to this range of energy evaluated, so the use of diets with reduced energy is an alternative in the poultry industry.

Keywords : Diet; Metabolizable energy; Laying hens; Egg.

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