OBJECTIVE The Bashang Long-tail chicken (BS), an indigenous Chinese breed, is considered cold tolerant. We selected BS, the Rhode Island Red (RIR), and their reciprocal crossbreds for the present study. The objectives were: i) to validate whether BS is cold tolerant and whether egg production and cold tolerance of crossbreds could be improved; and ii) to determine the physiological characterist...

background: no study has been conducted on iron requirements of broiler breeder hens until now. objectives: the purpose of the present study was to determine the iron requirement of broiler breeder hens using nonlinear models. methods: forty eight (cobb 500) broiler breeder hens were individually placed in galvanized wire cages. in order to depletion of hens iron reserved, hens were offered a s...

s of papers 19 series were fed to the same strain of layers starting at 31 wk of age. Broken line regression analysis provided the following isoleucine estimates (g/day): Series 1 egg production, 0.46; Series 1 egg mass, 0.58; Series 2 egg production, 0.52; Series 2 egg mass, 0.50.

Juvenile turkey hens were actively immunized against vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) prior to photostimulation to evaluate its effect on enhancing egg production. VIP antibody titers were generated in the VIP immunized hens and a greater rate of egg production per hen was observed compared to controls. In addition, the first egg laying cycle was extended for an additional 7 wk without a sig...

The effects of dietary supplementation with phytase and 25-hydroxycholecalciferol on the performance characteristics of commercial layers that were inoculated prelay (12 wk of age) or at the onset of lay (22 wk of age) with F-strain Mycoplasma gallisepticum were assessed. Experimental layer diets, which included a basal control diet or the same diet supplemented with 0.025% phytase and 25-hydro...

An eight week study was conducted to investigate the effect of inclusion of tomato waste meal in layer diets on laying performance, egg quality and lipid profile as a means to reduce feed cost and pollution. Four laying diets containing tomato waste meal (TWM) at four levels of 0, 3, 6 or 9% were assigned randomly to 4 groups of 40 birds divided among four replicates of 10 birds in each dietary...

Alternative production systems have increased popularity in the egg industry to address consumer demands for the production of commercial eggs that reduce concerns over animal welfare. This experiment was conducted at the NCDA&CS, Piedmont Research Station, in conjunction with the NCLP&MT. This study consisted of 6 replicates totaling 378 hens of a single commercial egg strain, housed in an enr...

An experiment was conducted to elucidate the effects of turmeric powder supplementation on egg production performance of old laying hens (80 weeks of age). There were 40 hens of Hysex Brown strain used in the study. They were caged individually, and randomly divided into 4 treatment groups of diet containing 0 (control), 1, 2 and 4 % oven dried turmeric powder for 3 periods of 4 weeks; Egg prod...