Replacement of Crab Meal for Fish Meal on Performance and Egg Quality Characteristics of Laying Hens

Abstract

A 12-week experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of crab meal replacement for fish meal on laying performance and egg quality characteristics. Two hundred laying hens at twelve weeks of laying life were used for the experiment. The laying hens were divided into five groups. Five dietary treatment were formulated to form T1, T2, T3 and T4 and crab meal was incorporated in the diet to replace fish meal at 0%, 25% 50% 75 and 100% levels respectively. Each group of laying hens was randomly assigned to one of the treatment diets in a completely randomized design. Each group was further divided into four (4) replicates of ten (10) birds each. Feed and water were supplied ad libitum. Results showed that the treatment diets did not have significant (P>0.05) influence on final weight, body weight changes, feed intake, and feed conversion ratio of the laying birds. On egg quality characteristics, there was significant difference (P<0.05) on egg shell weight, shell thickness, egg weight, and egg breaking strength of the laying hens. Laying hens fed diet containing 100%, 75% crab meal replacement for fish meal recorded significantly (P<0.05) higher values for the afore-mentioned parameters. These results showed that replacement of fish meal with crab meal can be recommended to poultry farmers that are into commercial egg and breeder production whose target is shell thickness, egg breaking strength to reduce egg loss due to low shell thickness and egg breaking strength.