Evaluation of the effects of rations with different levels of metabolizable energy on performance of laying hens

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of rations with different levels of metabolizable energy on performance of laying hens. The experiment was conducted on 25 laying hens of the commercial high line W-36 strain with 4 treatments and 4 replicates (16 laying hens in each replicate) in a completely randomized design. Treatments included: (1) diet with amount of metabolizable energy recommended by NRC in 1994 (as control group), (2) diet with 10% higher level of metabolizable energy than that recommended by NRC in 1994, (3) diet with 10% lower level of metabolizable energy than that recommended by NRC in 1994 and (4) diet with 15% lower level of metabolizable energy than that recommended by NRC in 1994 which were fed for 10 weeks (from the age of 41 to 51 weeks) to the laying hens. The results demonstrated that the amount of feed intake was significantly different among treatments (p0.05). It was concluded that using diets with 15% lower level of metabolizable energy than that recommended by NRC, can reduce the cost of egg production significantly without affecting egg traits (p