Abstract: A total of 945 41-weeks-old Loman Brown layers were selected and randomly divided into 5 groups with 3 repeats per group and 63 chickens in each to assess the effect of different compound Chinese herbal medicine on production performance of layers, the control groupⅠwas fed on basal diet, the experiment Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ and Ⅴ groups were fed with basal diet supplemented with 0.1% the Chinese herbal medicine A (codonopsis, angelica, tiger plate, dodder seed, motherwort, allicin and multidimensional, etc.), B (angelica, licorice, ginger, anemarrhena, multidimensional, etc.), C(buffalo, gypsum, berberine, male open leather, straw, licorice, even the wings, anemarrhena), D(andrographis, sophora, radix, licorice, enno), respectively. The preliminary trial lasted for 7 days, and the experimental period lasted for 56 days. The results showed as follows: compared with the control group, the laying rates of groups Ⅱ and Ⅲ, at the end of 44 weeks, significantly improved by 0.92% (P<0.05) and 0.78% (P<0.05), respectively. The laying rate of control group was significantly lower (P<0.05) than those in other groups at the end of the trial. The egg weight of group Ⅱ was significantly higher (P<0.05) than that other groups. Therefore, compound Chinese herbal medicine could improve the average laying rate and egg weight, and decrease the mortality. The better combination was including codonopsis, angelica, tiger plate, dodder seed, motherwort, allicin and multidimensional, etc.

Key words: compound Chinese herbal medicine; layers; laying rate; mortality rate