Effect of Dietary Inclussion of Antibiotics and Wild Sunflower Leafmeal (<i>Tithonia Diversifolia</i>) Fed to Laying Birds

Abstract

The effect of addition of penicillin, streptomycin and wild sunflower leaf in layer diet on the performance of hens was investigated. Forty (40) Shaver Brown layers at twenty four weeks of age were involved in a completely randomized design experiment. They were randomly allocated to give dietary treatments. Each treatment was repeated twice with four birds in a replicate. The control diet contained 0% wild sunflower leaf meal WSFLM. (diet 1). Basal diet contained 7.5% WSFLM. Penicillin and streptomycin were separately added to basal diets at 100ppm. The last diet contained basal diet with the mixture of the two antibiotics at l00ppm each. There was significant improvement in egg weight (p<0.01), and hen day production (p<0.05) of birds fed basal and antibiotic supplemented diets. Yolk colour was significantly (<0.01) enhanced by the leaf meal however, feed intake, haugh unit, yolk index and shell thickness were not affected by dietary treatments. Conclusively, the use of wild sunflower leaf meal and these antibiotics may be adequate for laying performance of birds in the tropics.

Key Words: Antibiotics, Wild sunflower leaf meal, egg quality, Laying performance