UTILIZATION OF NATURAL ANTIOXIDANTS ON THE PERFORMANCE, SENSORY AND QUALITY OF ISA BROWN LAYER'S EGGS

Natural antioxidants as a potential for antibiotics alternative, have proven zero residue effect in poultry products. Three hundred (300) ISA Brown point of lay birds with 65% hen-day egg production (HDEP) were used for the experiment and randomly assigned to five (5) dietary treatments of three (3) replicates with twenty (20) birds each: T1= Negative Control (NC)- basal diet, T2= Positive Control containing basal diet + 0.1% oxytretracycline while T3-T5 contain basal diet supplemented with Oregano (ORG), Rosemary (RSM) and Nutmeg (NMG) respectively, each included at 5g/kg of basal diet. Data were collected on the production performance, sensory properties of egg and the egg qualities of Isa Brown Layer’ Egg and subjected to One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results revealed that significant variations exist in all production parameters, supplementation of NMG and ORG compared favourably (p<0.05) with NC in HDEP Percentage (p=0.0003), Total Number of Egg/week (p=0.002), Feed Conversion Ratio (p=0.009), egg diameter (43.80 and 43.89mm), yolk height (16.00 and 16.04mm), albumen height (7.60 and 7.32mm) and haugh unit (86.51 and 85.78). ORG had highest egg shape (p>0.05) and yolk index% (p<0.05) relative to both controls. Ease of peeling and shell colour were significantly influenced (p=0.0001) and overall acceptability was however similar (p>0.05) to controls. The shell, albumen and yolk colour were rated highest (slightly to moderately light) with RSM diet supplementation. It can be concluded that dietary supplementation of NMG and ORG improved production performance and egg qualities while RSM improved the sensory properties relative to both controls.