Productive Performance of Laying Hens Fed Different Levels of Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles with or without Certain Feed Additives

The objective of this work was to evaluate the inclusion of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) as substitution for soybean meal in Hisex Brown laying hen diets with or without enzyme or vitamin E supplementation on productive performance. A total number of 180 Hisex Brown laying hens at 26 weeks of age were randomly divided into 15 treatment groups in a 5 × 3 factorial design experiment, included five levels of DDGS substitution rates for soybean meal (0, 25, 50, 75 and 100%) and three levels of feed additives (without, 250 mg enzyme/kg diet or 200 mg vitamin E/kg diet) through 26-38 weeks of age. The results indicated that increasing DDGS substitution level more than 50% decreased (P≤0.01) averages of feed consumption and feed conversion, egg number and mass. All of these traits gave satisfactory results when hens fed 25 or 50% DDGS substituted by soybean meal. Enzyme or vitamin E supplementation significantly (P≤0.01) decreased both of feed consumption and egg mass. It could be concluded that DDGS was successfully substituted for soybean meal in laying hen diets up to 50% without adverse effects on the performance of laying hens.