Efforts to improve quality of duck egg yolk through giving rations containing Spirulina

Abstract

Generally raising duck in Indonesia aims to produce eggs, thus the quality of eggs becomes important and determine the success marketing of business results. After increasing the production of eggs, people also tend to choose duck eggs that have a good quality. The Aspects that are usually to be the consumer consideration in choosing the good quality of duck eggs are the color of yolks are not pale, eggs have a large size and cleanliness of eggshell. It is well known that the diet has affects to the color of yolks, ie feed ingredients containing carotenoid pigments especially beta carotene and xanthophyll pigments. The Feed that contain a lots of beta carotene and xantophil pigments is in forage likes Spirulina (Spirulina Sp.). Spirulina (Spirulina Sp.) is a single cell protein (PST) microalga that can be a source of dye laying duck ration because of very high contains in fikocyanin, xanthophyll and beta-carotene. The study used a Completely Randomized Design with 5 doses treatment of addition of spirulina (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2%of the ration). Replication is done 4 times, so there are 20 unit of experiments and required 80 laying ducks. The observed variables include egg weight, yolk index, yolk percentage and yolk score. The results showed that egg weight, yolk index and yolk percentage were not significant. The addition of spirulina, one percent in ration (R2) can produce the standard quality of yolk which is in great demand by consumers with yolk score of 9.35.