Effect of Dietary Supplementation of Active Chromium-Insulin Compound on Egg Quality, Performance and Serum Biochemical Parameters of Laying Hens.

Samenvatting

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of chromium-insulin mixture on egg quality indices, performance and some serum parameters of laying hens. 120 Isa brown pullets at point-oflay were acquired and randomly divided into four experimental groups, each group was replicated thrice with ten birds per replicate. The birds were fed for 16 weeks with diets supplemented with varying levels of chromium-insulin mixture at 0ppm, 250ppm, 500ppm and 750ppm for treatments 1(control), 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Parameters such as egg weight; albumen weight, width; yolk index and colour; haugh unit; shell thickness and weight; weight gain, feed intake(FI), feed conversion ratio(FCR), protein efficiency ratio(PER), hen-day egg production, average egg production, total protein(TP), albumin, globulin, albumin–globulin ratio and cholesterol were evaluated. Egg weight, albumen weight and width of birds on treatments 3 and 4 were statistically superior (p<0.05) to those on treatments 1 and 2. Other egg quality indices were not significantly affected by the treatments. FI of birds on treatments 1 and 2 was significantly (p<0.05) higher than those on treatments 3 and 4. However, lowest mean value (2.04±0.34) for FCR was obtained in treatment 4 suggesting that the birds required less feed for egg production. Hen-day egg production and average egg production for birds on treatment 4 were statistically different (p<0.05) compared with those on control diet and have higher mean values than treatments 2 and 3 respectively. Glucose concentration decreased significantly as the chromium–insulin levels increased, while other serum parameters were not significantly influenced by the dietary treatments.