Effects of Sunflower Meal Supplementation as a Complementary Protein Source in the Laying Hen’s Diet on Productive Performance, Egg Quality, and Nutrient Digestibility

Abstract

The practical usage of untraditional feedstuffs such as sunflower meal (SFM) in laying hens nutrition in developing countries has received considerable attention. SFM is a by-product of the sunflower oil industry and has been progressively added to bird’s diets. Sunflower meal (SFM) is gaining great interest as a feed ingredient due to its eminent crude protein content, low anti-nutritional compounds, and low price. The current experiment was aimed to assess the production efficiency, egg quality, yolk fatty acids composition, and nutrient digestibility of laying hens fed SFM. A total of 162 Bovans Brown laying hens aged 60 weeks old were randomly allocated using a completely randomized design into three experimental groups of nine replicates each (n = six/replicate) for eight weeks. The dietary treatments involved a control (basal diet) and two levels of SFM, 50 and 100 g/kg feed. The dietary treatments did not influence live weight gain, feed intake, and egg mass. On one hand, the laying rate was increased; on the other hand, the feed conversion ratio and broken eggs rate of laying hens were decreased (p < 0.05) by the dietary inclusion of SFM. Dietary treatments had no effect on the egg’s quality characteristics except the yolk color and yolk height were larger (p = 0.01) for laying hens fed SFM compared with those fed the control. Dietary inclusion of SFM decreased (p < 0.05) the content of cholesterol in the egg yolk. Still, it increased the yolk contents of vitamin E, calcium, linoleic acid, linolenic acid, and oleic acid (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the dietary inclusion of SFM increased crude protein and calcium digestibility, but decreased the ether extract digestibility. In conclusion, our results suggested that the dietary inclusion of SFM, up to 100 g/kg at a late phase of laying, could improve the production performance, some of the egg quality traits, and nutrient digestibility while decreasing egg yolk cholesterol.

Byproducts (Flour, Meals, and Groats) from the Vegetable Oil Industry as a Potential Source of Antioxidants

“…Byproducts such as sunflower meal represent an excellent source of protein, essential amino acids, and fiber. It contains essential amino acids, vitamin B, and minerals, and has a high antioxidant property [10]. Grasso et al [11] observed that sunflower meal could be used for the nutritional improvement of muffins.…”

Effect of partially replacing soybean meal with sunflower meal with supplementation of multienzymes on growth performance, carcass characteristics, meat quality, ileal digestibility, digestive enzyme activity and caecal microbiota in broilers

“…Soybean meal (SBM) is an important protein source used popular in poultry diets as protein source [2] [3]. Yet, due to increasing prices, alternative feed ingredients are required for formulation of balanced and economical diet [4].…”

“…Sunflower meal (SFM), a byproduct obtained after oil extraction form sunflower seeds. Sunflower meal (SFM) is relatively cheaper source of protein and serves as suitable alternative to SBM as protein source in poultry feed formulation [3] [5], because of its good protein level, high contents of calcium, phosphorus, vitamin B-complex, and low levels of antinutritional and toxic compounds [4] [6]. The crude protein level of SFM varied from 29 to 45%, depending upon the oil extraction and dehulling process and remain inverse to fiber contents [5] [7,8].…”

“…The crude protein level of SFM varied from 29 to 45%, depending upon the oil extraction and dehulling process and remain inverse to fiber contents [5] [7,8]. Yet, high level of insoluble fiber and low level of limiting essential amino acids (lysine and methionine), are limiting factors for the use of SFM in poultry diet [2] [3]. However, high fiber contents in SFM indirectly favors the environment because they are used by bacteria to produce by volatile fatty acids production that which decreases pH of the manure [6] [9], and may be helpful in lowering blood cholesterol level [2] [3].…”

“…Yet, high level of insoluble fiber and low level of limiting essential amino acids (lysine and methionine), are limiting factors for the use of SFM in poultry diet [2] [3]. However, high fiber contents in SFM indirectly favors the environment because they are used by bacteria to produce by volatile fatty acids production that which decreases pH of the manure [6] [9], and may be helpful in lowering blood cholesterol level [2] [3]. In addition, increasing levels of SFM has been reported to decrease the liver fat contents [7] [10,11].…”