Dietary Chromium and Interior Egg Quality

Abstract

Effects of supplementing a corn-soy diet with chromium, vanadium and other ingredients on interior egg quality of caged layer hens were investigated. Although including 10 ppm chromium or 10% distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) significantly increased Haugh units in one experiment, no significant improvement was obtained by adding chromium to the basal diet in four subsequent experiments nor did DDGS show an improvement when included as a treatment in one of the latter experiments. In the first experiment, a combination of chromium and DDGS gave no further improvement in interior egg quality. No significant difference in glucose utilization was observed between hens fed diets with and without chromium.Vanadium significantly reduced Haugh unit values, but the marked deterioration of albumen quality caused by adding 10 or 20 ppm vanadium was significantly counteracted by adding chromium to the diet in all experiments. The effect of dietary zinc on Haugh units was not consistent.The results of these studies demonstrate that chromium is effective in counteracting the deleterious effect of vanadium on interior egg quality and indicate that chromium may be essential for maintenance of the normal physical state of egg albumen.