Effects of Sunflower Meal Supplementation as a Complementary Protein Source in the Laying Hen’s Diet on Productive Performance, Egg Quality, and Nutrient Digestibility

The practical usage of untraditional feedstuffs such as sunflower meal (SFM) in laying hens nutrition developing countries has received considerable attention. SFM is a by-product the oil industry and been progressively added to bird’s diets. Sunflower gaining great interest feed ingredient due its eminent crude protein content, low anti-nutritional compounds, price. current experiment was aimed assess production efficiency, egg quality, yolk fatty acids composition, nutrient digestibility fed SFM. A total 162 Bovans Brown aged 60 weeks old were randomly allocated using completely randomized design into three experimental groups nine replicates each (n = six/replicate) for eight weeks. dietary treatments involved control (basal diet) two levels SFM, 50 100 g/kg feed. did not influence live weight gain, intake, mass. On one hand, rate increased; on other conversion ratio broken eggs decreased (p < 0.05) by inclusion Dietary had no effect egg’s quality characteristics except color height larger 0.01) compared with those control. content cholesterol yolk. Still, it increased contents vitamin E, calcium, linoleic acid, linolenic oleic acid 0.05). Furthermore, calcium digestibility, but ether extract digestibility. In conclusion, our results suggested that up at late phase laying, could improve performance, some traits, while decreasing cholesterol.