With the objective of determining the nutritional requirement of digestible lysine for brown-egg laying hens from 79 to 95 weeks of age, an experiment was carried out using 180 commercial Lohmann Brown laying hens, distribuited in five treatments (0.555; 0.605; 0.655; 0.705 and 0.755%), six replications and six birds birds/replication. The feed intake and the food conversion per dozen of eggs were not influenced by the lysine levels. There was a positive linear effect on lysine intake and quadratic on feed conversion for egg mass. Egg mass and weight presented a quadratic response to the lysine levels. The egg component percentage and the internal quality were not influenced by the levels of lysine, except for the yolk index, which showed quadratic effect. The digestible lysine requirement for brown-egg laying hens on the 2nd production cycle of production was 0.681% lysine, that corresponds to a daily intake of 783 mg digestible lysine.
amino acids; egg production; egg quality
