It was conducted an experiment with the objective of setting the nutritional requirement of methionine+cystine for white-egg laying hens in the second production cycle. It was used 180 white-egg laying hens from 79 to 95 weeks of age submitted to a basal diet deficient in methionine+cystine, supplemented with 0.00; 0.053; 0.108; 0.161 or 0.214% of DL-methionine (98%) to provide 0.490; 0.542; 0.594; 0.648 and 0.698% of digestible methionine+cystine in the rations. Levels of supplementation followed ratios of methionine+cystine:lysine of 75, 83, 91, 99 and 107 with lysine fixed at 0.653%. A complete randomized design with five levels of methionine + cystine was used, with six replicates and six birds per experimental unit. Levels of methionine+cystine in the ration linearly affected feed conversion per dozen of eggs and mass of eggs, laying rate, egg mass and albumen index and they quadratically affected weight of eggs and Haugh unity. Percentage of components of the eggs was not affected by levels of methionine+cystine in the ration. Requirement of methionine+cystine for white-egg laying hens is higher than 0.698%, which corresponds to a consumption of at least 796 mg/bird/day.
amino acids; egg production; egg quality
