Effects of dietary fruit pulp supplementation on production performance, egg quality characteristics and egg lipidperoxidation of laying hens

In this study, we aimed to determine the effects of dried tomato, apple and grape pomaces supplementation in a based diet on yield performance, egg quality characteristics and egg lipid peroxidation in laying hens. For this aim, 196 Lohmann Sandy laying hens aged 25 weeks were divided into four groups with seven replicates for 9 weeks. Throughout the trial, while the control group hens (without additives) was fed with basal diet (no added), 4 % dried tomato pulp, 4% apple pulp and 2.5% grape pomace were added to the basal diet of the other treatment groups, respectively. During the experiment, feed consumption, egg production, feed conversion rate, egg weight, egg shape index, egg specific gravity, broken-cracked egg ratio, haugh unit, eggshell thickness, white and yolk index were determined weekly. Egg lipid peroxidation analysis was performed on the 1st and 28th days of the eggs collected from the groups at the end of the experiment. At the end of the experiment, while the highest feed consumption, egg weight and egg production were determined in the group fed diet supplemented dried tomato pulp (P<0.05), there was no significant difference among treatments the groups in terms of feed efficiency (P>0.05). Dietary supplementation of tomato and apple pomace decreased egg yolk malondialdehyde (MDA) levels on day 1 (P<0.05) and all pomace supplementation decreased egg yolk MDA levels on day 28 compared to the control groups (P<0.01). In addition, the addition of dried tomato pomace to the basal diet significantly increased egg weight and egg yolk yellow color (a) (P < 0.05). In conclusion, we determined that the addition of dried tomato and apple pomaces to the laying hen basal diets did not significantly affect the performance parameters and most of the egg quality characteristics in hens, and also some negative effects on the egg quality characteristics and especially the egg yolk color obtained from the hens fed with the addition of 2.5% grape pomace