The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the laying hens performance fed diets with different levels of lysine and sulfur amino acids digestible. A total of hundred and forty-four 24-week-old hens was allotted to a complete randomized design with three treatments, each with eight replicates of six hens. A corn-soybean positive control diet with high amino acids digestibility (HD) was compared to another diet using various by-products to partially replace corn and soybean meal. The second diet was formulated with low digestibility (LD) of lysine and sulfur amino acids as HD diet. The third diet (LD+AA) was similar to LD diet, but supplemented with L-Lysine·HCL and DL-methionine added to obtain levels of true digestible amino acids equal to HD diet. The evaluations were carried out in three periods of 28 days. There were no differences on feed intake, egg production, egg weight, egg mass and feed:egg mass ratio. The egg quality estimated by Haugh unit and by yolk and albumen index were not affected. The use of digestible amino acids based diet for layers hens was not confirmed in this research from digestible amino acids information obtained with cecectomized roosters.
digestible amino acids; egg production; egg quality; lysine; methionine
