Natural additives in functional egg production

Table eggs can play an important role as functional food, especially if specially designed mixtures enriched with o-3 fatty acids, natural pigments and vitamins are used for their production. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of inclusion of flax-corn meal co-extrudate (FCM) in combination with natural pigments in hens' diet on physical properties, yolk colour and fatty acid composition of eggs. One hundred and twenty Lohmann Brown laying hens were fed corn-soybean meal based diet with the addition of FCM at different levels: 0% (control C1 and C2), 13.50% experimental treatment (E1) and 22.50% experimental treatment (E2). The control treatment (C1) contained up to 3% fat, without added pigments while the control treatment (C2) contained up to 5% fat and synthetic pigments. Experimental treatments E1 and E2 (3% and 5% fat, respectively) had the same amount of natural pigments (1% carrot and 0.5% paprika). When compared with control eggs, no significant changes (p>0.05) in the egg quality characteristics were observed for E1 and E2 eggs. Desirable egg yolk colour of 12.78 RYCF (Roche Yolk Colour Fan scale) was achieved in the treatments E1 and E2. Eggs from hens fed FCM had significantly higher level (p<0.001) of a-linolenic (6.46% for E1 and 8.87% for E2), docosahexaenoic (2.01% for E1 and 2.08% for E2) and eicosapentaenoic (0.17% for E1 and 0.21% for E2) acids in comparison to eggs originated from hens fed control diets. The o-6/o-3 ratios of 1.43 and 1.01 in the treatments E1 and E2, respectively, were significantly lower (p<0.001) than o-6/o-3 ratios in the control treatments C1 and C2 (9.40 and 8.88, respectively). The content of tocopherol in eggs from the experimental treatments E1 and E2 were 6 and 8 times higher than in eggs from the control treatment C1 as well as 1.8 and 2.3 times higher than in eggs from the control treatment C2, respectively. By the addition of FCM and natural pigments in hens' diet, it is possible to produce functional egg with desirable colour and fatty acid composition.