The performance of laying hens on diets using barley as the main energy source

Abstract

An experiment compared egg production on a diet using a mixture of wheat, barley, and oats as the grain portion, with a diet in which the wheat and oats were replaced with barley. A comparison between sundried and dehydrated lucerne meal was included. A second experiment compared the same formulations of barley and mixed grain diets as used in the first experiment, and a mixed grain diet of higher crude protein content. Replacing wheat and oats with barley in an otherwise unchanged diet did not significantly affect the number of eggs produced but did increase the average egg weight by 1.1 g in both experiments, significantly so in one experiment, but not in the other. Increasing the crude protein content of the mixed grain diet did not significantly affect either egg production or egg weight. Consumption of the barley diet was greater than the mixed grain diets. This increase in consumption was less than would have been expected on the basis of equal energy intakes, indicating that the metabolizable energy value of the barley used was greater than values previously published for barley. No differences were found in performance between sundried and dehydrated lucerne meal.