Journal of Advances in Biology & Biotechnology

The experiment was conducted on 144 layers of BV- 300 strain from age of 59^th week and completed at 70^th week for the period of 12 weeks to study the replacement of soybean meal with rice distiller’s dried grains with soluble (rDDGS) in layer diet on egg quality parameters. The egg weight, shape index, egg surface area, albumin index, yolk index, yolk color score, percent eggshell weight and eggshell thickness parameters were studied. The layer birds were randomly distributed into 4 equal treatments T1 (Control), T2, T3 and T4 with 36-layer birds in each group having 6 replicates of 6 layers each. The control group T1 fed basal layer ration as per the recommendation of BV-300-layer strain and treatment groups T2, T3 and T4 offered 5, 10 and 15% rDDGS inclusion levels replacing soybean meal in diet and recorded for egg quality parameters. It was observed that, the inclusion of rDDGS at 0, 5, 10 and 15% in treatment groups T1, T2, T3 and T4 respectively, in layer diets were non-significantly influenced on shape index, egg surface area, albumin index, yolk index, yolk colour score, percent eggshell weight and eggshell thickness. The egg weights were significantly (P<0.05) decreased in treatment group T4 receiving diet at 15% rDDGS as compared to control group T1 and treatment group T2. However, there was non-significant differences for egg weight in groups T1, T2 and T3. Thus, it was concluded that the rice distiller’s dried grains with soluble (rDDGS) can be included up to 10% in layer diet with replacing soybean meal without affecting the body weights, external and internal egg quality parameters like eggshell weight, shape index, egg surface area, albumin index, yolk index, yolk colour score, egg surface area and eggshell thickness.