A comparative study of energy utilisation by the laying hen from diets containing a high proportion of fat and diets made up mainly from carbohydrate sources

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Abstract
An experiment was carried out in which laying hens were fed diets containing about 30 per cent tallow at three protein levels. Productive performances of hens on these diets were compared with those of hens fed either a diet containing 15 per cent arachis oil, a diet containing 15 per cent sucrose or a conventional cereal‐based control diet. It was found that the best performance was obtained with hens fed the control diet. Gross energetic efficiency of egg production was slightly lower in the birds fed the diets containing arachis or sucrose. It appeared that the lower efficiency was due to the higher mean body weight of birds on these diets. Egg size was significantly increased by feeding the diet containing arachis oil. Performance of hens given diets containing tallow was unsatisfactory. For each diet egg production was significantly less than that recorded for the control diet and the gross energetic efficiency of egg production was much lower than that on the control diet.