In improving the productive performance of commercial laying hens in conditions of high Betaine effect of adding betaine temperatures in Iraq.

Abstract

This study was conducted at the field of Department of Animal Productionof Agriculture College / University of Tikrit for the period from 18/7/2012 to9/10/2012 . The aim of this study is to determine the effect of added Betaine tothe diet to alleviation the negative effects of heat stress through studying someperformance traits of laying hens during summer along the duration of theexperiment. There hundred and sixty laying hens were used with 37-week-ofage, As it has been distributed on the four treatments, Each treatment included,two replicates, the first treatment (B1) without Betaine in the diet (controltreatment), The second treatment (B2) contains (0.5 g Betaine / kg feed). thirdtreatment (B3) (1 g Betaine / kg feed) .The fourth treatment (B4) contains (1.5 gBetaine / kg feed) the results showed that:The addition of Betaine led to a significant increase (P <0.05) in all treatmentsBetaine compared to the control treatment (without addition) in the rate of eggproduction (HD) , egg mass and the number of cumulative eggs during allwhole production period (37-48 week) as compared to the control treatment(without Betaine), Significant improvement in feed conversion efficiency, whilethere were no significant differences in mortality rate of the birds of thedifferent treatments.