Detoxified castor cake feed for laying hens

This experiment aimed to evaluate the use of detoxified castor cake (DCC) in the diet of laying hens on performance and internal and external quality of eggs. A total of 200 laying hens with 40-50 weeks of age, of Hy-Line W-36 (R) line, with 1543 +/- 34g body weight, were distributed in a completely randomized design with five treatments (0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% of DCC in diet) with five replicates of eight birds each. The feed intake, egg production, egg weight, egg mass and feed conversion were evaluated. The egg internal quality was evaluated by Haugh unit, percentage of albumen and yolk. The shell quality was evaluated by the thickness, density and specific percentage of eggshell. The performance variables were affected by the inclusion of DCC with a negative linear response to food intake and quadratic for egg production, egg weight, egg mass and feed conversion, with the best levels of 10.5, 5.7, 9.2 and 10.3% respectively. There was no significant effect of DCC inclusion for the variables of egg quality. It is conclude that the DCC can be included in hens diets up to 5.7% to optimize performance and do not alter the internal and external quality of the eggs.