Effect of Dietary Blue-Green Microalgae Inclusion as a Replacement to Soybean Meal on Laying Hens’ Performance, Egg Quality, Plasma Metabolites, and Hematology

SIMPLE SUMMARY: In recent years, a variety of natural products and medicinal plants have been widely implemented as alternative nutritional strategies for poultry production. This study aimed to investigate the possible impact of different dietary levels of spirulina microalgae on the productive performance, egg traits, blood metabolites, and hematological parameters of laying hens. Based on the findings, the spirulina could be contained within the layer diets as an alternative source of protein, with positive impacts on the laying hens’ production and physiological performance. ABSTRACT: Spirulina platensisis (SP) is a blue-green microalgae with a high value for animal and poultry nutrition. The study employed 250 40-week-old, HY-Line W-36 commercial laying hens. The layers received one of five experimental diet substitutes in five groups for 10 consecutive weeks (five replicates of 10 hens each group); a soybean-corn basal diet formulation without SP (Control group) or the soybean partially substituted with 3% SP, 6% SP, 9% SP, and 12% SP (for the remaining four groups). The results showed that dietary SP treatment significantly (p < 0.05) improved the productive performance, egg quality, blood metabolites, and hematological parameters of laying hens. In addition, there were linear and quadratic effects for increasing the levels of SP inclusion into the layer diets; however, the highest values of most parameters were observed when using 9% SP (90 g/kg of the layer diets). Furthermore, the results showed that 4.7% of the soybean meal ingredient in the layer diet could be replaced by 1% of SP. In conclusion, the partial replacement of soybean meal by SP into layer diets could be used as a promising nutritional approach to optimize the performance of laying hens.