Author(s)

Alagbe, JO^1*, Anorue, DN²

Affiliation(s)

¹DepartmentofAnimalNutritionandBiochemistry, SumitraResearchInstitute, Gujarat, India.

²Department of Animal Science, University of Abuja, Nigeria.

Corresponding Author

Alagbe, JO

ABSTRACT

An experiment lasting 12 weeks was conducted to assess the growth performance and egg quality of laying hens fed a diet supplemented with date palm seed powder. 250-30 week old Lohman brown layers weighing 1550.2 ± 0.62 grammes were acquired from a Gujarat breeding farm and randomly assigned to five treatments with five replicates (10 birds per replicate). The investigation lasted 84 days and used a completely randomised design. The diet was a basal diet (corn-soya meal based), which is compatible with the Nutritional Research Council's advice from 1994. Hens in treatment 1 were fed a basal diet without date palm seed powder, whereas those in treatments 2, 3, 4, and 5 were administered a basal diet with date palm seed powder at 20 g, 40 g, 60 g, and 80 g per kg, respectively. Birds have limitless access to fresh, clean water and food. The phyto-constituents discovered in date palm seed powder were phenols (891.44 mg/g), flavonoids (572.09 mg/g), tannins (65.56 mg/g), alkaloids (165.2 mg/g), terpenoids (332.8 mg/g), saponins (90.51 mg/g), and steroids (78.66 mg/g). Date palm powder treatment resulted in increased average daily weight gain, feed intake, hen day house production, and hen housed egg production (p < 0.05) compared to the control group. Supplementing with date palm seed powder decreased the feed conversion ratio from 4.69 to 5.05 (p < 0.05). The treatment had a substantial impact on egg weight (47.12 to 57.03 g), breadth and length (35.04 - 43.87 mm; 38.81 - 47.23 mm), shell thickness (0.19 - 0.35 mm), yolk colour (3.13 - 11.23), and haugh unit. It was determined that date seed powder can be supplemented at a rate of up to 80 g/kg diet to increase performance and yolk quality metrics when compared to hens fed a control diet, with no adverse impacts on their health state.

KEYWORDS

Date palm; Seed; Phytochemicals; Hens; Food safety

CITE THIS PAPER

Alagbe, JO, Anorue, DN. Growth performance and egg quality of laying hens fed with diet supplemented with date palm seed powder. Journal of Trends in Life Sciences. 2024, 2(2): 31-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.61784/jtls3003.

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