Performance and quality of eggs of commercial laying hens submitted to the diets with different vegetal oils

Abstract

It was evaluated the influence of the addition of different vegetal oils in diets for commercial laying hens on performance and internal and external egg quality. We used 224 laying hens Hy Line W-36, distributed in a randomized block design with seven treatments and four replications. The treatments consisted of seven diets with 2850 kcal ME/kg and 18% crude protein: T1 - control diet; T2 - 2% soybean oil; T3 - 4% soybean oil; T4 - 2% linseed oil; T5 - 4% linseed oil; T6 - 2% cottonseed oil; T7 - 4% cottonseed oil. The variables studied were: eggs production (hen/day), feed intake (g/hen/day), egg weight (g), feed:egg mass ratio (kg/kg), shell and albumen, yolk percentages, yolk coloration and cholesterol eggs (mg/g). The addition of vegetal oil did not alter the performance characteristics, quality and content of cholesterol in eggs, in relation to the control diet. The addition of 4% vegetal oil improved the yolk coloration, however, the linseed caused a reduction in yolk percentage. The supply of vegetal oil in the diets of the laying hens did not alter eggs cholesterol.