Effect of feeding rice based brewers dried grain on bone development and nutrient digestibility in laying hens

Abstract

An experiment was undertaken to study the response of feeding sun dried rice based brewers dried grain (RBDG) on bone development and nutrient digestibility of laying hens. For this, a feeding trial of 125 laying hens was conducted for 16 weeks (25th to 40th weeks of age) with completely randomized design divided into five treatments with 25 laying hens per treatment. Five experimental diets as per ICAR (2013) were prepared by incorporating rice brewers dried grain at inclusion level of (0, 10, 20, 30 and 40%) respectively by replacing maize and soybean meal from basal diet. The results revealed that the development of tibia bone at 40 weeks of age in term of bone morphometry such as length, proximal width, mid shaft width and distal width in mm, and tibia bone mineralization such as fresh bone weight, dried bone weight, bone moisture, total ash, calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) contents of laying hens did not differed significantly (P>0.05) among the treatment groups. The results also indicated that nitrogen intake and retained (g/b/d) did not differed significantly due to replacing maize and soybean meal with rice based brewer’s dried grain. However, significantly (P<0.05) lower value of nitrogen voided was found at 0 to 20% than that observed at 40% inclusion level of rice based brewer’s dried grain and also significantly lower nitrogen retention was observed at 40% inclusion level than those recorded at 0-20% RBDG. The calcium and phosphorus intake, voided, retained (g/b/d), and retention (%) did not differed significantly. Thus, it is concluded that rice based brewers dried grain (RBDG) can be safely incorporated in diet of laying hens at the inclusion level of 20% for better bone development and nutrient digestibility.