Effects of dietary inclusion of raw and processed acorn, stead corn on quantitative and qualitative traits of egg production and blood metabolites in Hy-line W36 laying hens

In order to examine the effects of dietary inclusion of raw or processed acorn on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of egg production and blood metabolites in laying hens, a total of 336 mature Hy-line W36 layers at the 34 week of age were randomly allocated to seven dietary treatments with four replications throughout eight weeks experimental period. Dietary treatments were included control, , 10 and 15 % of raw acorn and 5, 10 and 15 % of sodium hydroxide-treated acorn. Processing of acorn by sodium hydroxide (5%) for 24h resulted in an increase in crude protein content from 4.19 to 7.15 % and reduction of tannin percentage from 8.87 to 0.78. In addition, methionine, cystine and lysine were improved from 0.063, 0.025 and 0.122 % to 0.076, 0.067 and 0.285, respectively after processing by sodium hydroxide. Albumin percentage was significantly affected by dietary treatments, in which control and 15% raw acorn groups had highest and lowest percentage of albumin percentage, respectively. Yolk percentage of hens that were fed diets either containing raw acorn or processed acorn were higher than control treatment. There were no significant differences among treatments in production performance traits (feed intake, body weight, egg production, feed conversion ratio and egg mass). Egg shell thickness was differed significantly among treatments, in which the thinnest egg shell (394.08 μm) was observed in the control treatment and thickest one (386.16 μm) was observed in the birds fed diet containing 15 % of raw acorn. In conclusion, dietary inclusion of 10 % of processed acorn can be alternative feed ingredient instead of corn based on abundance and low cost of acorn.