SUPPLEMENTING FRESH LEMON TO GROWING JAPANESE QUAIL DIET AS A SAFE ALTERNATIVE TO ANTIBIOTIC, SYNTHETIC VITAMINS AND PREBIOTIC UNDER HOT CLIMATE.

Youssef, Sabbah Farouk Farouk; Abdel Latif, Hesham Ahmed; Abdel-Kafy, El-Sayed Mahfouz

doi:10.21608/epsj.2021.135084

SUPPLEMENTING FRESH LEMON TO GROWING JAPANESE QUAIL DIET AS A SAFE ALTERNATIVE TO ANTIBIOTIC, SYNTHETIC VITAMINS AND PREBIOTIC UNDER HOT CLIMATE.

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ poultry breeding department - animal production research institute- agriculture research center

² Agricultural research center- Animal production institute - Fayoum Poultry Research Station

³ Animal Production Research Institute Agricultural Research Center

10.21608/epsj.2021.135084

Abstract

this experiment was carried out to evaluate ability of inserting fresh lemon as a safe natural source in quail diet instead of antibiotic, synthetic vitamins and prebiotic under hot climate condition.A total 280 unsexed one- day- old Japanese quail were divided randomly into 7 groups. Each group consists of 4 replicates hold l0 chicks per each. The 1^st treatment fed control basal diet from 1 day to 6wks of age. Treatment groups from 2 to 7 fed control diet supplemented with 0.5gm oxytetracycline (20%) /kg diet, 20 g entire grinded fresh lemon /kg diet, 200mg vitamin C/kg diet, 20mgs vitamin E/kg diet, 1 g pectin /kg diet and 200mg vitamin C + 20mg vitamin E + 1g pectin/kg diet respectively. Growth performance, carcass characteristics, plasma proteins, liver enzymes, total antioxidant capacity and jejunumlactobacillus bacteria count weremeasured. The following results were obtained:
1-   Significant improvement in body weight and body weight gain were obtained via supplementing fresh lemon to quail diet compared with control diet but with no difference between other treatments.
2-   Plasma globulins and albumin/globulin ratio were significantly improved by fresh lemon supplementation compared with antibiotics.
3-   Significantdecrease in alanine aminotransferaseand total antioxidant capacity significantly increased when fresh lemon supplemented to quail diet compared with other treatments.
4-   Jejunum lactobacillus bacteria count increased significantly by supplementing basal diet with fresh lemon compared with other treatments.
So,supplementing fresh lemon to growing Japanese quail diet is a good naturalsource and able to be usedas safe alternative to antibiotics, synthetic vitamins and prebiotics.

Keywords