Chaiyapoom Bunchasak, Sompong Te-Chato and Ankana Hanbunchong

pp. 789 - 797

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to determine the effects of supplemental dietary folate and vitamin
B₁₂ on egg composition, reproductive traits and triglyceride content in liver of laying hens at 64 weeks of age.
Four levels of dietary folate (0, 0.5, 4 and 10 mg/kg) and three levels of dietary vitamin B₁₂ (0, 0.01 and 0.08
mg/kg) were fed in 4x3 factorial in a complete randomized design. The basal diet was based on corn and
soybean meal. There were four replicates of twelve layers per each treatment. The experimental diets and
water were offered ad libitum for 8 weeks. The results showed that egg production, feed intake, egg weight,
egg mass, oviduct weight, liver weight, and liver triglyceride of the hens were not affected by both folate and
vitamin B₁₂ supplementation (P>0.05). However, increasing the vitamin B₁₂ caused significantly higher ovary
weight (2.75, 2.67 and 3.03% of BW.) and albumen percentage (64.07, 64.27 and 64.93%), but significantly
lower yolk percentage (26.36, 26.10 and 25.62%) and yolk:albumen ratio than the unsupplemented group
(0.41, 0.40 and 0.39%) (P<0.05).

Keywords

• folate
• vitamin B12
• laying hen
• liver triglyceride