Response of laying hens to dietary supplementation with energetically equivalent amounts of maize starch or maize oil

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Abstract
Equivalent levels of metabolisable energy (ME) from either maize starch or maize oil were fed to laying hens receiving a constant intake of all other nutrients from diets containing either maize or wheat as the sole cereal ingredient.Birds receiving maize oil as compared with maize starch utilised a greater proportion of the ME to synthesise body tissue. Increasing dietary additions of maize starch consistently improved the numbers of eggs laid but no beneficial effect of maize starch on egg size could be observed. In contrast, increasing dietary additions of maize oil consistently improved egg size but had little influence on the numbers of eggs laid. Although the increased egg size in birds fed supplementary maize oil appeared to be due to some component of the oil other than ME no significant difference in total egg yield could be observed between maize starch and maize oil treatments.The substitution of wheat for maize as the sole cereal ingredient in the ration did not alter the pat terns of response observed with the maize diet.

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