Effects of Dietary Supplementation With Green and Brown Seaweeds on Laying Performance, Egg Quality, and Blood Lipid Profile and Antioxidant Capacity in Laying Japanese Quail

Abstract

The effect of green and brown seaweeds supplementation on laying performance, egg quality, serum lipid profile and antioxidant capacity was evaluated in Japanese quails. Five groups of Japanese quails (total = 180; 120 hens + 60 males) of 10 wks old were fed on diets without or with green (GS) and brown (BS) seaweeds, each at 1.5 and 3% for 14 weeks. Results indicate that GS and BS supplementation significantly improved egg-laying rate and increase egg number, egg weight and egg mass and decrease feed conversion ratio (FCR). However, feed consumption (FC) was not significantly affected by experimental treatments. The GS and BS supplemented groups led to improve the eggshell thickness, also helped to improve the egg yolk weight, index and color compared to the control. Supplementing dried GS and BS significantly decreased the value of Haugh unit, total lipids and total cholesterol content of egg yolk as well as displayed higher fertility and hatchability percentages than those of the control group. Quails received dried GS and BS treatments had a higher dressing percentage and a lesser percentage of abdominal fat compared to the control group. Serum total lipids, triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL and LDL values were significantly decreased compared to the control. There were significant effects on enzymatic antioxidant activity of blood serum (malondialdehyde, total antioxidant capacity, catalase, glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase). It is concluded that green and brown seaweeds supplementation can improve egg-laying performance and had a positive effect on fertility and hatchability values and resulted in significant reduction in total lipids and total cholesterol in the serum and yolk while enhancing total antioxidant capacity in blood serum as well as positively affecting economic parameters. Thus, these results suggested that green and brown seaweeds can be used safely as a feed additive in diets for laying Japanese quail.

Nutritional potential of marine and freshwater algae as dietary supplements for growing rabbits

“…It has been reported that including macroalgae in rabbit diets improves feed efficiency by enhancing gut integrity, nutrient absorption, and resistance to infections, which consequently improves the productive performance of growing rabbits in terms of BWG, FCR, and diet digestibility (El-Banna 2003;El-Banna et al 2005). The present results are consistent with those obtained for laying hens (Rizk et al 2017) and laying quails (Abu Hafsa et al 2019), in that both previous studies reported an improvement in productive performance associated with dietary inclusion of marine seaweeds. The improved FCR of rabbits fed diets containing the algae U. lactuca, P. capillacea, and S. polyrrhiza, which is reflected in the increased growth rate of the rabbits, maybe due to the improvements in rabbit nutrient digestibility observed in the current study.…”

Seaweeds, Intact and Processed, as a Valuable Component of Poultry Feeds

“…Seaweeds contain polysaccharides (brown algae: alginate, cellulose, fucoidan, laminarin; red: agar, carrageenan, cellulose, porphyran, xylan; green: cellulose, inulin, pectin, xylan, ulvan), proteins, essential amino acids, minerals (K, Ca, Mg, Zn, Cu, Co, I, B), vitamins (B12, K, C, E, A, D), lipids, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), pigments such as carotenoids (carotene xanthophyll), chlorophylls, phycobilins (e.g., phycoerythrin) and many antioxidant compounds, Figure 1. Examples of seaweeds used in poultry feeding [15,18,[20][21][22][30][31][32][33][35][36][37][38][39][40][41].…”

“…Seaweeds have great potential to be used as feed additives containing minerals, especially Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, I, Mn, Se-and to a lesser extent, P and Zn [15,40]. The availability of seaweeds chelated micro-metals to animals (including poultry) is higher than that found in inorganic compounds [21,40].…”

“…Seaweeds have great potential to be used as feed additives containing minerals, especially Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, I, Mn, Se-and to a lesser extent, P and Zn [15,40]. The availability of seaweeds chelated micro-metals to animals (including poultry) is higher than that found in inorganic compounds [21,40]. This observation was also confirmed in the work of Michalak et al (2011), where microelements bound with green seaweeds via biosorption were better bioavailable to laying hens than inorganic salts of these microelements [43].…”

“…Appropriately selected seaweeds applied at low inclusion levels can improve not only poultry growth performance and the quality of products, but also their health status (e.g., immune function) due to alteration of gut microbiome and antioxidant properties and can be considered an alternative to antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) used in poultry production [21,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. Most often, seaweeds are used as feed additives for hens and broilers, but there are also a few reports on their application in duck [30,37,38], Japanese quail [39,40] and cockerel [41] feeding.…”