An experiment was carried out in order to verify the effect of adding fumaric acid to laying hens diet on productive performance. Two hundred Lohmann laying hens, 36 weeks old, were allotted in a randomized entering design, with five treatments, five replicates and eight birds per replication. Birds were fed a basal diet with or without fumaric acid. The treatments consisted in adding to the basal diet 0; 0.25; 0.5; 0.75 and 1.0% of fumaric acid. The results of performance and both internal and external egg quality , obtained for three studied cicles of 28 days , indicated that there were no statistical differences among the treatments. There was no effect of nutrient potentiation, therefore, the use of fumaric acid at the studied levels of laying hen diets is not practicable.
fumaric acid; laying hens; productive performance
