Effects of replacing dietary fish meal or soybean meal with shrimp waste meal on the performance of laying hens

Abstract

One hundred and forty-four (144) 45 week old laying hens of Black Nera strain were used in an experiment to determine the effect of replacing dietary fish meal (FM) or soybean meal (SBM) with shrimp waste meal (SWM) on the performance of laying birds. The birds were randomly allocated to three groups of 48 birds each. Each group was further divided into four replicates of twelve (12) birds each. Three iso-proteinous and iso-caloric diets were formulated such that a practical layer diet which served as the control diet (diet I) contained soybean meal (SBM) and fishmeal (FM) as the major protein sources. In diet 2, the FM in the control diet (25gkg') was replaced by SWM (40.43kg ') (protein for protein), while SWM (201.5gkg"') was made to replace the SBM (180gkg') in the control diet (protein for protein) in diet 3. The birds were given feed and water ad libitum. The experiment lasted 10 weeks. The performance in terms of feed intake, hen-day production, egg number and efficiency of egg production (i.e. dozen egg per kg feed) indicated that birds on diet ? (SWM/SBM) performed equally well as those in the control diet. Performance was however significantly (P<0.05) reduced when SWM replaced the protein supplied by SBM in which case about 20% of SWM was employed. There were no significant differences in the albumen height, shell thickness, egg shape index and haugh units of eggs produced. Birds on diet 3 however had the lowest (P<0.05) values of egg weight, egg length, egg breadth and the weights of yolk and albumen, Results of this study showed that shrimp waste-meal at minimal level (4%) can successfully replace fishmeal in a practical layers diet without negatively affecting performance or egg quality of the birds. However, replacing 180g SBM/kg with 201.5g SWM/kg diet had detrimental effect on performance probably because of the high level of SWM that was employed.