Abstract
The effects of feeding diets containing cassava meal (tuber and leaf) were investigated on feed intake, feed conversion ratio, weight gain, egg performance, egg quality and digestibility of layer during 4 weeks of feeding experiment. Thirty-six white leghorn layer were allocated into 4 groups of nine hens each. Diet I, contained no cassava meal but maize 57% of the diet and served as control. In diet II, III and IV, the proportion of maize was replaced with the cassava meal at the levels of 50% (40% tuber + 10% leaf), 75% (65% tuber + 10% leaf), and 100% (90% tuber + 10% leaf), respectively. The cassava meal diets tended to reduce dry matter digestibility. The birds were able to tolerate up to 75% of cassava meal (65% tuber + 10% leaf) after which egg production declined. Cassava meal diet did not have significant (p>0.05) dietary effects on the egg quality parameters. However, the trend of yolk color score decreased to the increase of the substitution level of cassava meal. The results demonstrated that maize (57%) in the commercial formula feed could be replaced with cassava meal up to 75% without any adverse effects on the laying performance and egg quality.
