Preprint
Article

Assessment of Residual Feed Intake and Its Relevant Measurements in Two Varieties of Japanese Quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica) under High Environmental Temperature

Altmetrics

Downloads

391

Views

304

Comments

0

A peer-reviewed article of this preprint also exists.

Submitted:

21 April 2019

Posted:

22 April 2019

You are already at the latest version

Alerts
Abstract
Three hundred ten 12-wek-old laying quails (155 each) were randomly selected from the initial population and kept in individual battery cages. The measurements of growth and egg production were determined to derive RFI. The relationship between RFI and egg quality, blood parameters and carcass characteristics was also determined. The results indicated that the gray quails had significantly higher egg mass and lower broken eggs compared to the white quails. A significant increase for eggshell strength and shell % was found in eggs produced from gray quails compared to white counterparts, although the shell thickness was the same. The results of multiple regression analysis clearly identified a significant effect of metabolic body weight and egg mass in computing expected feed intake rather than body weight gain in both varieties of Japanese quails. Strongly positive correlation between RFI and feed intake in both gray and white quail varieties was found. The same trend was also observed for feed conversion ratio (FCR). Therefore, including RFI in selection criteria of Japanese quail to improve FCR under high environmental temperature is highly recommended.
Keywords: 
Subject: Biology and Life Sciences  -   Animal Science, Veterinary Science and Zoology
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
Prerpints.org logo

Preprints.org is a free preprint server supported by MDPI in Basel, Switzerland.

Subscribe

© 2024 MDPI (Basel, Switzerland) unless otherwise stated