Effects of different levels of dried tomato pomace on performance, egg quality and serum metabolites of laying hens

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary inclusion of dried tomato pomace (DTP) on performance, egg quality and serum metabolites in laying hens. A total of one hundred and forty four LOHMANN LSL-LITE hens were randomly allocated into 4 groups consisting of 6 replicates, each replicate has 6 birds. Birds were fed either a basal diet or the basal diet supplemented with 150, 170 or 190 g/kg of DTP. As a result of this study, there were no significant differences in body weight (BW), feed intake (FI), egg production (EP), feed conversion ratio (FCR) egg weight (EW), egg mass (EM), eggshell weight (ESW), eggshell thickness (EST) and Haugh unit (HU) among treatments. Dietary inclusion of DTP significantly increased yolk color score (YCS, P < 0.01). As dietary DTP increased from 0 to 19%, YCS significantly increased from 7.25 to 9.67 and 7.25 to 9.83 in first and second periods, respectively. Total serum protein, cholesterol, LDL, HDL, albumin, glucose and triglyceride levels were not significantly affected by DTP addition. In summary, DTP can be used as an alternative feedstuff in laying hen diets at inclusion levels up to 190 g/kg without any negative impact on performance and egg quality traits.

Key words: Dried tomato pomace, egg quality, laying hen, serum metabolites.