Effects of Vitamin E and Zinc Fortification in Diets on Laying Hens Performances

Abstract

High environment temperatureandrelativehumidity such as in Indonesia can cause heat stress and lead to decreaseinegg production of laying hen. Hopefully, enrichmentof antioxidantsin the dietcan reducethe negativeeffect ofheat stress. The objectiveof this studywas to evaluatethe effects of vitamin E and zinc fortification as antioxidants in commercial diets on the performancesofISA-Brown laying hens. This studyused160laying hensaged 20weeks of old and they were fed treatment diets during 5 weeks. A completely randomized design(CRD) with4 treatments, 4 replications, and 10 birds of each replication, was used in this experiment. The birds were fed either control diet (T0) or control diet fortified with vitamin E 200 ppm (T1), Zn 200 ppm (T2), or combination of vitamin E 200 ppm and Zn 200 ppm (T3). The data were analysed using analyses of variance (ANOVA), and significant differences were further analysed using Duncan’s multiple range test. The parameters observed were feed consumption, hen day egg and mass production, egg weight, and feed conversion ratio. The results showedthat fortification of combination of vitamin E 200 ppm and Zn 200 ppm (T3) significantly (P<0.05) decreased feed consumption of laying hens. Fortification of vitamin E 200 ppm (T1) or of vitamin E 200 ppm and Zn 200 ppm (T3) highly significantly (P<0.01) increased egg production and decreased feed conversion ratio. The layer hens reared in high environment temperature (>28ºC) such as in Indonesia need more vitamin E to optimize the egg production. The treatments did not influence the egg weight. The conclusion of this study is that fortification of combination of vitamin E 200 ppm and zinc 200 ppm in the commercial diet yielded the best performances of the laying hens.