PRODUCTIVE AND EGG QUALITY TRAITS OF LAYING QUAIL SUBMITTED TO FORCED MOLTING

• Autor(a) principal: Teixeira, Régis Siqueira de Castro
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Outros Autores: Cardoso, William Maciel, Siqueira, Adonai Aragão de, Nogueira, George Cândido, Campello, Claúdio Cabral, Buxadé, Carlos Carbó
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Ciência animal brasileira (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.ufg.br/vet/article/view/956
• topic: Produção de aves; Produção de aves

This work was performed to verify egg production of Japanese quails submitted to induced molt by zinc oxide method (MZ) and fasting (MC). A total number of 160 Japanese quails with 48 weeks of age were evaluated for post-molt egg production, percentage of egg contents and the viability rate of eggs for 12 weeks. According to the applied methods (fasting or zinc oxide), the birds were submitted to different body weight losses (BWL): 25 or 35%. The quails were separated into different treatment groups, according to their body weight loss during molt: Control group (unmolted quails), MC (induced by MC with 35% of BWL); MZ25 (induced by MZ with 25% of BWL); MZ35 (induced by MZ with 35% of BWL). Each treatment has 8 replicates with five birds each. The quails were evaluated for egg-laying production, egg weight, yolk and shell weight and their ratio. Between the second and fourth weeks of egg laying production, the MZ25 group had the best egg laying performance. There wasn’t significant improvements for egg characteristics and feed conversion of molted quails compared to the ones of control group. The forced molt by zinc oxide was able just to improve, numerically, egg production during the first weeks when the quails were submitted to a 25% body weight loss.KEY WORDS: Coturnix japonica, eggs, fasting, forced molting, quail, zinc oxide.