Evaluation of dried Khat (Catha Edulis) leaf as natural additives on egg quality, embryonic mortality, and chick quality of white leghorn layers

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of supplementation of Khat leave as a natural feed additive on egg quality, fertility, embryonic mortality, hatchability, and chick quality of White Leghorn (WL) layers. One hundred fifty-six hens and twenty-four cocks of WL at twenty-four weeks of age were randomly dis-tributed to four treatments, each replicated three times with thirteen layers and two cocks per replication and kept on a deep litter system. Treatment rations were formulated by the addition of Khat leave on layers ration with the proportion of 0% (T1), 0.2% (T2), 0.4% (T3), and 0.6% (T4). All data were subjected to analysis of variance. The egg weight of layers in T3 (54.1) was higher (P<0.05) than that of layers in T4 (51.5) and T1 (51.8). Roche color reading was significantly higher for T4 (4.7±0.19) than T3 (3.4±0.19), T2 (2.2±0.19), and T1 (1.7±0.19). There were no significant differences (P > 0.05) among treatments in yolk height, yolk index, yolk diameter, albumen height, Haugh unit, fertility, hatchability, chick weight, and visual score. Embryonic mortality percentage was significantly (P<0.05) higher for T1 than for other treatments. Chick length was significantly (p<0.05) higher in T2, T4, and T3 than in T1. Finally, this study can be concluded that the use of dried Khat leaves as an additive up to 0.6% in ration of White Leghorn layers increased eggshell weight and yolk coulor and reduced embryonic mortality.