Effect of Different Levels of Dietary Crude Protein, Lysine and Methionine on Performance of White Leghorn Laying Hens

Objective: An experiment was conducted to study the effect of feeding of different levels of dietary crude protein (17.5, 16.5 and 15.5%) with varying levels of lysine (0.77, 0.73 and 0.68%) and methionine (0.36, 0.34 and 0.32%) on performance of white leghorn layers from 34-53 weeks of age. Methodology: Each diet was fed ad libitum to 12 replicates consisting of 88 birds in each replicate. Egg Production (EP), Feed Intake (FI), gram of feed to produce gram of egg mass (FE), Egg Weight (EW) and Egg Mass (EM) were recorded at 28 days intervals. Results: Dietary reduction in protein levels had reduced (p<0.001) EP, FE, EW and EM during most of the period and overall experimental period whereas, FI was not affected by dietary CP. The EP was lower (p<0.001) in the group fed with 15.5% CP diet than other groups. The FE was lower (p<0.001) in the group fed 17.5% CP. The EW was decreased (p<0.001) with reduction in dietary CP levels during different periods (except period 3 and 4) and overall experiment (34-53 weeks). Conclusion: From the results it was evident that a diet with 16.5% CP with 0.73% lysine and 0.34% methionine were essential to elicit optimum performance in the WL-layers.