This study was conducted to investigate the feeding various levels of wood vinegar for thirty six weeks on performance and egg quality of laying hens. Four hundred fifty of nineteen weeks old ISA Brown were divided into five treatments with five replications. Five levels of wood vinegar were supplemented with 0, 0.025, 0.050, 0.075 and 0.1%. Corn-Soy basal diet contained 18.0% CP, 2,800 ㎉/㎏. Eggs were collected and weighed every day. Egg production and feed conversion were recorded every four weeks. Eggshell breaking strength, thickness and Haugh Unit were measured every twelve weeks. Fatty acid composition, cholesterol contents of egg yolk were measured at 42 and 54 weeks old.
Egg production was not statistically different between wood vinegar treatments and control. However, birds fed 0.75∼0.1% wood vinegar showed significantly higher egg production after reaching peak than control(P$lt;0.05). Egg weight of birds fed 0.025% wood vinegar tended to be higher than other treatments, but was not significance. Daily eggmass of 0.1% wood vinegar treatments was higher by 1.2g than control, but was not significantly different. Feed intake of control birds was highest of all treatments. Feed conversion was lowest in 0.1% wood vinegar treatments but was not significantly different. Egg quality and Haugh unit also showed no differences among treatments. There were no consistency in liver and abdominal fat to body ratio. Polyunsaturated fatty acid(PUFA: C20:4, C22:6) of egg yolk fed 0.1% wood vinegar were significantly higher than those fed the control(P$lt;0.05). The cholesterol levels of yolk and serum were not significantly different among treatments. However, they tended to be lower in 0.075% wood vinegar treatments.
The results of this experiment indicated that 0.1% wood vinegar tended to improve the egg production compared to that of other treatments and significantly(P$lt;0.05%) increased PLJFA(C20:4, C22:6) content in egg yolk.
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