• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.125-131
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• 2012

The study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation of Macsumsuk and herb resources on the egg performance and quality in Korean native crossbred chickens. A total of three hundred sixty improved Korean native crossbred chickens in primary laying period were randomly allocated to four treatments (30 birds/treatment ${\times}$ 3 replications) for eight weeks. Dietary treatments included CON (basal diets), T1 (basal diets + 0.3% Macsumsuk), T2 (basal diets + 0.3% herb resources) and T3 (basal diets + 0.3% Macsumsuk + 0.3% herb resources). No significant differences were found for feed intake, egg weight and average egg production (P>0.05), however, cracked egg rate was higher in CON than in T1-T3, especially T3 was the lowest (P<0.05). The crude fat content of whole eggs, CON (11.20%) was higher (P<0.05) than the experimental treatments (9.67%-10.01%). Haugh unit, yolk color, eggshell thickness, and eggshell breaking strength tended to be higher in T1 and T2, but there were no significant differences (P>0.05). However, the experimental treatments were significantly higher than CON (P<0.05) for eggshell breaking strength, and T3 (14.91 mg/g) contained lower (P<0.05) cholesterol in egg yolk than other treatments. For fatty acid composition in egg yolk, CON group showed higher saturated fatty acid contents than the experimental treatments, but T1 (67.00%), T2 (66.78%) and T3 (66.82%) were higher than CON for unsaturated fatty acids (P<0.05). In conclusion, supplementating Macsumsuk and herb resources together in diets of Korean native crossbred chickens could decrease egg yolk cholesterol and improve egg quality.