Influence of Dietary Particle Size and Sources of Calcium and Vitamin D3 on Production Performance, Egg Quality and Blood Calcium Concentration of ISA Brown Laying Hens Park J.H., Jeong J.S., Lee S.I., Kim I.H.* Department of Animal Resource and Science, Dankook University, Cheonan, 330–714, South Korea *Corresponding author: inhokim@dankook.ac.kr
Online published on 5 August, 2017. Abstract This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary supplementation with calcium varying in particle size and different calcium sources on production performance, egg quality, and blood calcium concentration with comparing vitamin D3 supplementation in laying hens. A total of 250 ISA brown laying hens were used in a 7 wk feeding experiment and randomly assigned to 5 dietary treatments with 5 replicates of 10 birds each. The treatments were TRT1 (basal diet+6% small particle limestone (SPL: <0.8 mm)+1.5% large particle limestone (LPL: <0.8 mm), TRT2 (basal diet+3% SPL+4.5% LPL), TRT3 (basal diet+3% SPL+4.455% LPL+0.045% large particle oyster shell (LPO)), TRT4 (basal diet+3% SPL+4.41% LPL+0.09% LPO), and TRT5 (basal diet+3% SPL+4.498% LPL+0.002% 1, 25-dihydroxycholecalciferol). Overall, our results suggested that calcium particle size, different calcium sources, and vitamin D3 had no significant influence on egg production performance, egg quality, and blood calcium concentration, however, there was a linear tendency. In other words, LPL prolongs retention time in the digestive tract, resulting in higher blood calcium concentration. Additionally, vitamin D3 supplementation improved this effect clearly compared with TRT1 (P<0.05). Top Keywords Calcium source, 1, 25-dihydroxycalciferol, Egg quality, Laying hen, Particle size. Top |