Effect of Probiotic Thepax® and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Supplementation on Performance and Egg Quality of Laying Hens

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of different levels of probiotic Thepax^® (0.05, 0.1 and 0.15 %) and yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) (0.05, 0.1 and 0.15 %) on performance and egg quality of laying hens. Two hundred and ten 63 wk of age Hy-line W-36 hens were used. The birds were assigned seven treatment groups in a randomized complete block design, with three replicates each with ten hens. The hens performance and egg parameters were evaluated on the three 28-d periods. The results of body weight changes, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, egg production, egg weight, shell percent and albumin weight did not indicate any treatment effect (P>0.05). Shell weight, shell thickness, yolk weight and yolk cholesterol were significantly (P=0.05) different among treatment groups. Yolk cholesterol was lower for 3, 5, 6 and 7^th treatments compared to the control. The use of probiotic and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were not affected by production. But, egg quality did improved from 63 to 75 weeks of age.