Vet World Vol.17 January-2024 Article-23
Research Article
Veterinary World, 17(1): 197-206
https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2024.197-206
Effects of essential oils on egg production and feed efficiency as influenced by laying hen breed: A meta-analysis
2. Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun, Turkey.
3. Animal Feed and Nutrition Modelling Research Group, Animal Science Faculty, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia.
Background and Aim: Successful rearing of laying hens to achieve optimal egg production is an endeavor that often faces various constraints and challenges, such as infectious diseases, environmental stressors, and fluctuations in feed quality. The incorporation of essential oils (EOs) into the diet of laying hens has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Therefore, our study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of EO inclusion in laying hen diets by considering the effects of production phase and breed on performance, egg quality, serum biochemistry, gut health, and antioxidant activity.
Materials and Methods: The articles were obtained from the Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, and PubMed using the search terms “essential oils,” “laying hens,” and “phytobiotics.” Data from 27 articles and 71 experiments were grouped according to laying hen production phase and breed in the database. The EO levels ranged from 0 to 1000 mg/kg, with thymol and carvacrol being the major EOs. A mixed model was used to analyze the data. Random effects were applied to the treatment, and fixed effects were applied to EO level, production phase, and breed.
Results: Egg production, feed intake, feed efficiency, eggshell quality, villus height, crypt depth, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase levels increased linearly (p = 0.05) and egg weight and mass increased quadratically (p < 0.05) with increasing EO concentrations. An interaction was observed between the EO level egg production and feed conversion ratio (p = 0.05). Serum glucose, cholesterol, and malondialdehyde levels decreased with increasing EO concentrations (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: The inclusion of EOs effectively increased egg production, feed efficiency, egg weight, egg mass, eggshell quality, oxidative enzymes, and intestinal health. In addition, the proportion of dietary EOs in lightweight laying hens was higher than that in semi-heavy-weight laying hens in improving egg production and feeding efficiency. Keywords: antioxidant enzyme, egg production, egg quality, gut health, serum biochemistry.
Keywords: antioxidant enzyme, egg production, egg quality, gut health, serum biochemistry.
How to cite this article: Darmawan A, Öztürk E, Güngör E, Özlü Ş, and Jayanegara A (2024) Effects of essential oils on egg production and feed efficiency as influenced by laying hen breed: A meta-analysis, Veterinary World, 17(1): 197-206.
Received: 30-09-2023 Accepted: 26-12-2023 Published online: 23-01-2024
Corresponding author: Arif Darmawan E-mail: arifdarmawan@apps.ipb.ac.id
DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2024.197-206
Copyright: Darmawan, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.