Performance, behavior, carcass traits and blood constituents of Japanese quails reared under heat stress

Abstract EN

Three hundred of one day old Japanese quail chicks were housed in battery cages and kept under similar environmental and managerial conditions.

During rising period the temperature was set initially at 37°C and gradually reduced at a rate of 3 °C / week until 28th days old was reached.

At that time, birds were randomly distributed into five groups (60 chicks each) with four replicates (15 chicks each) to examine the effect of heat stress on performance, behavior, carcass traits and some blood constituents.

The five groups were reared for 15 days (5th and 6th week) at 22, 29, 34, 36 and 40˚C respectively.

Diet was formulated to contain approximately 24 % CP and 2.8 Meal ME / Kg as recommended by NRC, (1994).

The birds were fed ad-libitum on the mash diet and given free access to fresh and clean water.

The results indicated that, there was a linear decrease in body weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion with increased environmental temperature.

Heat stress significantly (p < 0.05) affect the invective, social, loco motor and non-aggressive pecking behavior of the experimented quails.

Dressing liver and gizzard weights were, significantly (p < 0.05) decreased, while, heart % was significantly increased with increasing the environmental temperature.

The results also indicated that, the estimated blood parameters were affected significantly (p < 0.05) by heat stress.

It could be concluded that, heat stress affects the quail performance and the optimum obtained at 22˚C.