UTTAR PRADESH JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY

Organic acids have been demonstrated as a substitute for antibiotic growth promoters in poultry production; however, research is still being conducted due to the contradictory results in the biological and economic performances of poultry birds. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of organic acids on laying performance, egg quality traits, and economic efficiency of commercial layer hens. In a complete randomized design, 260, 25-week-old layer hens weighing an initial body wieght of 1609 ± 18. 5g were randomly assigned to 5 treatment groups consisting of 4 replicates. Treatments were basal diets without any additive (T1); with 30mg oxytetracycline (T2), with 16gm citric acid (T3), 8gm malic acid (T4); and a combination of 8g citric + 4gm malic acid (T5) per kg of basal diets. The result revealed that a significantly higher difference (p<0.001) was observed in hen day egg production, egg quality traits, and feed conversion ratio (FCR). However, there was no significant difference (P>0.05) recorded among treatment groups in body weight gain and feed intake. Layer hens fed on organic acid diets improved the hen-day egg production by 85.51% to 86.54% as compared to T1 (77.75%) and T2 (80.07%). Overall, mixed acid (T5) reflected the highest performance in terms of FCR, albumin weight, egg mass, total return, and net profit. T5 improved the profitability by 13.26% and 11.82% and relative economic efficiency by 16.83% and 17.40% than T1 and T2, respectively. In conclusion, all dietary organic acids supplementation can replace the antibiotic effectively, but mixed organic acid does the best in terms of both the biological and economic performance of layer hens.