Effect of alum (Aluminum sulfate) supplementation to poultry litter on layer performance and litter pH Hassan R.A.*, Eid Y.Z.1, Bassiouny Hanaa A. Department of Poultry Nutrition, Animal Production Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Ministry of Agriculture, Giza-12618, Egypt 1Faculty of AgricultureKaferelsheikh University, Egypt *Corresponding author: redaalihasan@yahoo.com
Online Published on 21 July, 2022. Abstract Hassan, R.A., Eid, Y.Z. and Bassiouny, Hanaa A. 2022. Effect of alum (Aluminum sulfate) supplementation to poultry litter on layer performance and litter pH. Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology, 22: 17–29. The current experiment was conducted to assess the effect of using different litter types with or without alum on performance and litter quality of the laying hens. A total number of 120 Inshas layer hens of 24 weeks of age were randomly distributed into 4 groups (3 replicates each 10 hens) of floor litter in following groups: (L1) birds were raised on wood shaving litter, (L2) birds were raised on wheat straw litter, (L1 + alum) birds were raised wood shaving with 100 g of alum/kg of bedding, and (L2+alum) birds were raised on wheat straw litter with 100 g of alum/kg of bedding. Topping of fresh litter with acidifier amendment improved body weight, egg weight, egg number, egg mass, feed intake and feed conversion ratio of layers as compared to chickens in the untreated litter group. In comparison with the control group, alum treatment reduced the pH of the litter. Regarding the NH4+-N content, alum-treated litter showed a higher value than the untreated litter. On average, alum-treated litter had lower P content than the untreated litter. Alum treated groups showed a significant increase in dry matter and total nitrogen content when compared with the untreated group. Thus it could be concluded that litter modification with alum treatment had a significant impact on litter quality and in turn enhanced the productive performance of layer chickens without any adverse effect. Top Keywords Aluminum sulfate, Chickens, Litter quality, Nitrogen, pH. Top |