The effect of using silk worm pupae powder as a partial replacement for soybean meal in commercial laying hen diets

The experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of inclusion of silkworm pupae powder meal on the productive performance and egg qualitative traits of laying hens from 69 to 81 wk of age. A total of 184 Lohmann LSL laying hens was used in a completely randomized design with 5 treatments, each replicated 6 times. Dietary treatments were as: control diet (based on corn and soybean meal) and four diets by inclusion of 5, 7.5, 10 and 12.5% of silkworm pupae meal powder. All diets were supplied an equal amount of AME, crude protein and amino acids. For the entire experimental period, egg weight, feed conversion ratio and hen-day egg production rate were not affected by dietary treatments. However, feed intake was significantly higher for hens fed 10% of silkworm pupae powder compared to control (P≤0.05). The inclusion of silkworm pupae powder up to 7.5% significantly improved egg mass (P≤0.05) during 12 wk of the trial. None of the egg quality variables studied including albumin weight, yolk weight, abnormal and broken eggs, yolk index, egg shape index, shell weight, shell thickness, haugh unit and specific gravity was affected by dietary treatments. It is concluded that silkworm pupae powder can be used as a partial replacement for soybean meal up to 12.5% in laying-hen diets without negatively affecting bird performance and egg quality characteristics.