All eggs throughout the experiment were visually checked for cracks and breakage under artificial lighting, and the hen day laying rate as well as the number of damaged eggs was recorded daily.
Daily feed intake was determined every other week by weighing back all uneaten feed allocated to each replication.
Egg weights were determined for all eggs produced on 2 consecutive days every other week and egg mass was calculated as laying rateegg weight.
Feed conversion was calculated as grams of egg mass produced per gram of feed consumed.
Hen mortality was recorded daily during the experiment.
Performance parameters such as feed intake and percentage laying rate were adjusted for mortalities.