The relationship between nutrition and welfare is usually considered to be a direct result of supplying the hen with adequate quantities feed water. This simple notion freedom from hunger thirst belies fact that nutrients play pivotal role in body’s response challenges whether they relate ambient temperature, gastrointestinal health, pathogen exposure, metabolic disorders, or social mental stre...

Egg production curves describe the laying patterns of hen populations over time. The objectives of this study were to fit the weekly egg production rate of selected and nonselected lines of a White Leghorn hen population, using nonlinear and segmented polynomial models, and to study how the selection process changed the egg-laying patterns between these 2 lines. Weekly egg production rates over...

Induced molting of laying hens is a practice used by commercial egg producers to increase the productive lifetime of their flock. However, the conventional method of inducing molt, which involves removal of feed, water, or both as well as a reduction in photoperiod to less than a natural day has drawn criticism due to animal welfare and food safety concerns. The objective of this study was to e...

In the laying hen, very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) particles contain large amounts of apolipoprotein (apo)-VLDL-II in addition to apoB. These triglyceride-rich lipoproteins are transported from the liver primarily to growing oocytes. Since no appreciable hydrolysis of triglyceride occurs during this transport, we have investigated the possibility that apoVLDL-II functions as an inhibitor of...

An experiment was conducted with 72 Bovans Brown laying hens to determine the effect of dietary crude glycerin on laying performance; egg quality; retention of N, Ca, and P; and metabolizability of energy. The dietary treatments consisted of a control corn-soybean diet containing 6% corn starch (17% CP, 2,775 kcal/kg of AME(n), 0.81% lysine, 0.36% methionine, 3.60% Ca, and 0.37% available P) an...

The objective of the present study is to research the effect of dietary vitamin E (Vit E) on laying performance, lipid peroxidation and antioxidative status in laying hens under experimentally induced oxidative stress conditions via Dexamethasone (DEX) administration. A total of 60 Egyptian local strain (Gimmizah) laying hens at 36 weeks of age were housed in individual cages in an open-sided b...

The presence of receptor for arginine vasotocin (AVT) in the vagina of the oviduct of the hen was demonstrated by the use of radioligand binding assays on membrane fractions of the tissue. The binding to [125I]AVT was highly competitive with unlabeled AVT. Scatchard analysis revealed that the binding sites are of a single class. The equilibrium dissociation constant (Kd) was 0.48+/-0.05 nM (x+/...

Revision [final] Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) Dissemination Level PU Public PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) x RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Servi...

the aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility of improving egg lipids and fatty acids composition of laying hens through inclusion of olive cake plus barley malt rootlets in the diets. seventy, 54-week-old, lohman laying hens were fed for a 12 weeks laying period on 3 iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous diets contained 0 (control), 28.5 g olive cake (oc) + 25.5 g barley malt rootl...