The objective of this study was to compare the effects of different dietary Astragalus polysaccharides (APS) levels on antioxidant capacity and egg quality of laying hens. One thousand four hundred and forty 380-day-old healthy Hyline laying hens with the similar productive performance were randomly allocated to six treatments with four replicates each and sixty hens in each replicate, and fed the corn-soybean meal based diet with 0, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 mg/kg APS, respectively. The experiment lasted for eight weeks. The results showed that moderate supplementation of APS significantly increased the activities of superoxide dimutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and significantly decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) content in serum (P<0.05); furthermore, there was a rising trend in the activities of SOD and GSH-Px and a decreasing trend in MDA content in egg yolk (P>0.05). As for egg quality, moderate supplementation of APS improved yolk color, and increased Haugh unit and egg shell thickness (P>0.05). These results indicate that moderate APS supplementation can increase the activities of antioxidant enzymes, which may prevent lutein from being oxidized and promote the pigment deposition associated with the improvement of yolk color.［Chinese Journal of Animal Nutrition，2011，23（2）：280-284］