DIETARY EFFECT OF EXOGENOUS PHYTASE ENZYME AND ORGANIC ACIDS ON PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE OF LAYING HENS AT THE LATTER STAGE OF PRODUCTION

Abstract

A study was carried out to assess, examine and quantify the effect of dietary exogenous phytase enzyme, Rena-Phytase-400 (RP) and organic acids mixture, ProviMax (PRO) supplementation on production performance of laying hens at the latter stage of production. Sixty Hisex Brown hens of 65 weeks old were allocated to 5 treatments, each containing 12 hens. The hens in individual cages were supplied feed 120 g/b/day (not fixed) containing 18.21% CP and 2762.21 MJ ME/kg diet. Laying hens were randomly alloted to 5 dietary treatments T0 (control), T1 (RP-2kg/tonne feed), T2 (PRO-1.5 kg/tonne of feed), T3 (RP1kg/tonne of feed + PRO-1kg/tonne of feed) and T4 (RP-1.5kg/tonne of feed + *PRO-1.5kg/tonne of feed). Increased egg production was found in T1, T3 and T4 by about 8%, 6%, 8% in the first month, by 10%, 9% and 11% in the second month and by 8%, 9% and 11% in the third month respectively than the control diet(T0) in this study. Best results were found by the supplementation of ProviMax @ 1.5 kg/Tonne of feed in T2 that increased hen day egg production (%) by about 14%, 17.02% and 14.62% respectively in the successive months in comparison with control group. It was found that phytase enzyme and organic acids had no significant effect on body fatness but significant relationship within treatment groups was found in the body composition parameters which includes heart, liver, spleen and oviduct weight. Shell weight, shell percent, shell thickness, shape index, Albumen index, yolk index, and percent yolk did not maintain any relationship with increasing levels of phytase and organic acids (p>0.05). The highest economical efficiency was obtained in T2 compared with the T0, T1, T3 and T4 by 4.93%, 2.52%, 4.9% and 8.46% respectively. Increased egg production against different doses of exogenous phytase and organic acids signifies that decreased egg production at older ages of hens might be to some extent appeared to be related to Phosphorus unavailability. Therefore, it became imperative to test the effect of exogenous phytase and organic acids on egg production maintaining different single and combined dose levels in order to confirm and assess the results of the current study.