Acomparison of the effects of commercial prebiotic (safmannan®, biomos ® and fermacto®) on performance, egg quality and antibody titer of Avian Influenza and Newcastle disease in laying hens

Effects of different sources of prebiotic on performance and immune response in laying hens were evaluated in this study.

The aim of this experiment was to compare the effects of commercial prebiotics on performance, egg quality and antibody titer against Newcastle disease (ND) and Avian Influenza (AI) in laying hens.

The experiment was performed for 11 weeks (from 33 to 44 weeks of age) on 240 laying hens (the LSL strain), in a completely randomized design with 4 treatments, and 5 replicate for each treatment and 12 birds for each replicate. Treatments were: 1) control; 2) control +Safmannan®; 3) control +Bio-Mos® and 4) control +Fermacto®.

The results showed that feed intake, feed conversion ratio and egg production percentage were not affected by different sources of prebiotic. However, egg weight and egg mass were significantly increased (p<0.05) by adding prebiotic, in comparison with control diet. Egg specific gravity and shell thickness were increased (p<0.05) by prebiotic addition. The results of experiment showed that antibody titers against AI and ND were significantly increased (p<0.05) by prebiotics compared with control group.

The results showed that the effects of different sources of prebiotic on performance and immune response of laying hen are similar. However, inclusion of prebiotic in the diet results in improvement of the performance and antibody titer against Influenza and Newcastle.