Feeding strategy for laying hens to counter low egg prices in the market

The present study was conducted to reduce the cost of feeding in laying hens by mixing easily available feed ingredients with a farmer so that cost of egg production can be reduced and in turn margin of profit increased. A complete layer mash (crumbles) purchased from the local market costing Rs. 29/kg. was used as control diet (T1). This diet (T1) was replaced with 10 and 20 per cent each of ground maize and broken rice at the time of feeding daily. Thus, a total of 5 experimental diets were prepared as T1 (control), T2 (T1+ 10% ground maize), T3 (T1+ 20% ground maize), T4 (T1+10% broken rice) and T5 (t1+ 20% broken rice). All 5 experimental diets were fed to 5 groups of layers with 20 hens in each group. Thus, a total of 100 laying hens were used for this experiment. All the birds were housed in individual cage and fed individually for a period of 90 d during the months of February to April, 2021. The results revealed that feeding cost per hen during 3 m period came out to be Rs. 261, Rs. 256, Rs. 248, Rs.247 and Rs.233 in groups T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5, respectively and there was a saving of Rs.5, Rs. 13, Rs. 14, and Rs. 22 per hen in groups T2, T3 T4 and T5 as compared to T1 when diet was mixed with maize (10%), Maize (20%), broken rice (10% and broken rice (20%). Therefore, this strategy can be helpful during the period when there is very high feed cost and low egg price in order to save expenditure on feeding of hens. On the other hand, when net profit calculated, it was found that maximum profit was in control group (T1) followed by T2, T3, T4 and T5. The reduction in net profit was due to a smaller number of eggs laid by birds of T2, T3, T4 and T5 group.