Growth and carcass characteristics of Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica) fed natural propriety premix based diets

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of two natural proprietary vitamin-mineral premixes on growth and carcass characteristics of Japanese quails. Four hundred (10 day-old) quails were randomly allotted to dietary treatments with 5 replicates of 20 chicks per treatment and the birds were fed ad libitum for 28 days. Four dietary treatments formulated with different vitamin mineral premixes; T1 -Optimum (commercial premix), T2- DietPro (natural premix), T3 - DietMix (natural premix) while T4 was without premix (control). The design of the experiment was a complete randomized design. The experimental diets were offered to the respective birds with water given ad libitum. Daily feed intake, body weight gain and feed conversion ratio of the growing quail were not significantly different (P>0.05) among treatments. However, the eviscerated weight, warm carcass weight and dressing percent of quails varied significantly (P<0.05) with the type of vitamin-mineral premix with DietMix (T3) having the highest values (89.12, 86.56 and 64.49%) while birds fed without premix (T4) had the lowest values (78.36, 75.16, 57.98) for all the parameters. The values of other primal cuts were statistically similar (P>0.05). Therefore, it is concluded that substituting synthetic vitamin mineral premixes with natural vitamin mineral premixes in diets is possible with no adverse effects on performance and carcass characteristics of growing Japanese quail.

Key words: Proprietary Premix, Growth, Natural premix