The Effects of Cottonseed Meal on Laying Hens

Cotton is mostly grown to produce fibers from its seed capsules. These seed capsules pop open when they are ripe releasing tufts of fluff carrying small cotton seeds to the wind. The fluff produces cotton fibers, but the seeds provide both oil, used in cooking, and cottonseed meal. The meal becomes chicken feed and food for other livestock. What laying chickens eat affects their egg production both in quality and quantity, and cottonseed should only be a small part of their diet.

  1. Protein in Cottonseed Meal

    • Agricultural extensions such as the one at the University of Florida recommend cottonseed meal as a protein source for laying hens. There are some drawbacks with feeding cottenseed meal to laying hens, because meal processed at high temperatures becomes deficient in lysine, an essential amino acid.

    Gossypol

    • Gossypol, a yellow pigment found in cottonseed, binds to the lysine at high temperatures. Free gossypol is also toxic when fed long term. To overcome free gossypol toxicity, and reduce the lysine deficit, process the cottonseed meal via the screw extraction method, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

      Additionally, they recommend iron supplements in the ratio of four iron molecules for each gossypol molecule to decrease the gossypol effects.

    Saturated Fat

    • Feeding laying hens cottonseed increases the percent of saturated fat in eggs and the hen itself. Cottonseed causes the increase in saturated fat due to its cyclopropenoid compounds, according to the University of Florida. Excess cottonseed in a layers diet also causes rubbery yolks. In addition, laying hens fed too much cottonseed meal will lay eggs with mottled yolks. Although the previously recommended levels of iron supplementation will help with low levels of cottonseed meal in the diet, once the ratio exceeds the recommended limits the iron no longer helps.

    Feeding Rates

    • Because of the various drawbacks of feeding cottonseed meal to laying hens, restrict the meal to between 110 to 220 pounds of meal per ton of feed or 11 percent of the diet by weight. Exceeding this level can cause the egg yolk to turn olive-green during storage. Cottonseed meal can also discolor the whites of the egg, turning them pink, which is a trait the consumer finds undesirable.