APPLICATION OF NANO-SELENIUM IN LAYER DIETS TO IMPROVE THE PRODUCTIVE PERFORMANCE, EGG QUALITY AND IMMUNOLOGICAL TRAITS IN CHICKENS

Abstract

The experiment was designed to study the effect of dietary Nanoselenium on productive performance, egg quality and immunological traits in laying hens. A total number of 180 laying hens of Silver Montazah strain were used. Layers were divided randomly into six treatments. Five nano-selenium treatment diets with concentrations (200,160,120,80 and 40 mg/ ton for treatments (T2,T3,T4,T5 and T6), respectively. The treatment (T1) was used as control with 200 mg/ ton diet sodium selenite. The results showed that application of nano-selenium in layer diets was effective in increasing egg number and egg mass. Also, nano-selenium improved some immunological traits, feed conversion and some egg quality traits. The optimum level of nano-selenium was 200 mg/ ton diet, which recorded 5.40 g feed/ g egg mass compared to 9.24 g feed/ g egg mass in control treatment (200 mg/ ton diet). Applications of 200 mg/ ton diets nano-selenium were significantly decreased, heterophils (H%) and H/ A ratio. Where, Lymphocyte was significantly (p ≤ 0.01) increased. Also, there were positive relationship between shell thickness, shell weight (%) and white blood cells counts with increasing the levels of Nano-selenium in layer diets from 40 to 200 mg/ ton as compared to control.