Effects of dietary administration of multi-enzyme on productive performance of laying hens

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation of multi-enzyme on productive performance of laying hens fed different levels of safflower meal. A total of 250 Leghorn laying hens (Hy-Line W-36) 47 weeks-old were randomly assigned into 10 experimental treatments with 5 replicates of 5 birds each. Experimental treatments consisted of five safflower meal levels (0.0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 g/100g of diet) with and without multienzyme (Bergazym P®,0.0 and 0.1 g/100g of diet) as a 5 × 2 factorial arrangement that fed during a 10 weeks feeding trial. During the experimental period, eggs were collected and weighed daily, and feed consumption was weekly recorded. Then, the productive performance indices including feed consumption, egg production percentage, egg weight, egg mass and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were reported as 14 d intervals and during entire trial period. Feeding laying hens 2.5% and 5% safflower meal showed tendency to increased egg mass in the entire experimental period. This improvement was largely due to the marginal increase in egg production percentage. The best FCR was found in birds fed on diets contained in 0.0% to 5.0 % safflower meal. Feed conversion ratio increased significantly after feeding at least 7.5 % safflower meal. Increase in FCR was due to the trend in decreased egg production and contemporaneous increase in feed consumption. On the other hand, using multi-enzyme did not improve FCR. Adding multi-enzyme increased the egg production percentage and egg mass. Therefore, our results indicated that safflower meal can be included in diets of laying hens up to 5% with no adverse effect on performance. Also, administration of cocktail commercial enzyme to the diets of laying hens would have beneficial effects on productive performance, especially in terms of egg production.