Abstract

A trial was carried out on-station to evaluate the effect of replacing fishmeal by cottonseed cake and cereal bran in the diets of exotic layers. One hundred and twenty layers at 28 weeks of age were randomly distributed to four feeding/management regimes: (1) SFM, scavenging in the daytime with a diet containing cracked maize, fishmeal, a vitamin-mineral premix and oyster shells provided between 16:00h and 08:00h; (2) SCB, same as (1) but with fishmeal replaced by cottonseed cake and wheat-maize bran; (3) SO, scavenging only with no supplement provided; (4) CCB, confined and given the diet in treatment (2) ad-libitum. Daily dry matter (DM) intakes for CCB, SCB and SFM were 95.5%, 60.5% and 48.5% of the requirement, respectively (P< 0.05). In the semi-scavenging treatments, no significant difference was found in energy, calcium and phosphorus intakes, but crude protein (CP) and essential amino acid intakes were lower for SFM compared to SCB (P<0.05). Hen-day and hen-housed production were highest in CCB and lowest in SO (P<0.05), while no significant differences were found between the semi-scavenging treatments. Feed conversion ratio and feed cost/kg eggs were lowest in CCB and highest in SFM (P<0.05). Egg weight and shell thickness were higher in SCB compared to SFM. Yolk colour was darkest in SO and palest in CCB. It was concluded that fishmeal can be replaced advantageously by cottonseed cake and a mixture of wheat and maize bran in diets for confined and semi-scavenging exotic layers

Keywords

Burkina Faso; egg production; exotic hens; fishmeal; cottonseed cake; semi-scavenging

Published in

African Journal of Agricultural Research
2007, volume: 2, pages: 496-504

Authors' information