Effect of wheat cultivar and enzyme supplementation on nutrient availability and performance of laying hens

Abstract

This study examined the effect of four wheat cultivars (Belvedere, Glenlea, Norboro, and Walton) grown in the Maritime provinces of Canada and dietary enzyme supplementation on apparent metabolizable energy (AME), digestibility of crude protein (CP), and performance of laying hens, and compared these values to those obtained using a corn-based diet. Forty groups of three adjacent battery cages, each housing two hens, were fed each diet which included the wheat samples (61.0%) or locally obtained corn (65.1%), with or without commercial enzymes containing a mixture of xylanase, protease, and amylase for corn-based diets and a mixture of xylanase and protease for wheat-based diets. Excreta samples were collected at 17 d for analysis of nutrient retention. The diet that the hens consumed had no significant effect on performance. The feed conversion ratio of hens was lowest (1.79) in the final week of the experiment when egg production was highest (97.0%) and feed intake lowest (109 g bird-1 d-1). The diet significantly affected both AME and digestibility of CP. The wheat cultivar influenced the AME and digestibility of CP when these diets were fed to laying hens, with enzyme supplementation reducing the AME and digestibility of CP for diets containing three (Belvedere, Glenlea, and Walton) of the four wheat cultivars. The significant improvement with enzyme supplementation of the corn-based diet is promising and should be the basis of future studies. Key words: Wheat, layers, apparent metabolizable energy, enzyme