The objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of the supplementation of iron in ration based on corn and soybean meal, on the productive performance, egg quality , egg yolk iron deposition and blood parameters of commercial laying hens in second production cycle. 240 commercial Lohmann-LSL laying hens with 72 weeks of age were submitted to the forced molt. The hens were raised in the conventional cage by using three hens by cage (25 x 45 x 40cm). A completely randomized design was utilized, with treatments based on five iron supplementation levels (0, 20, 40 60 and 80ppm) in the ration, with four replications and three evaluations periods of 28 days each. The corn/soybean meal based diet were used, containing 127 ppm of analysed iron. The iron supplementation did not affect the productive performance and internal and external eggs quality and analysed blood parameters . The content of iron egg yolk (mg/100g) increased linearly when iron supplementation increased in the diet at the level of 80 ppm, used in this research.
iron; poultry nutrition; laying hens
