NUTRITIONAL MODIFICATION to ALLEVIATE HEAT STRESS and ENHANCE PRODUCTIVE PERFORMANCE of JAPANESE QUAIL SUBJECTED to HIGH AMBIENT TEMPERATURE

This study was conducted to examine the effect of substituting 15, 20, 25
and 30 % of energy supplied by corn in a control diet with energy from by-product of
palm oil extraction (POE) to enhance productive performance and combat heat stress of
Japanese quail. A total of 375, 7-d old Japanese quail chicks were randomly distributed
following a completely randomized design into 5 treatment groups (N = 75 chicks/group).
Each treatment having three replications (n=25 chicks/ replicate). Results indicated that
live weight and gain differed significantly (P ≤ 0.05) among treatment groups. While feed
intake, protein and energy intake insignificantly affected. However, FCR recorded the
best values for birds fed diet inclusion different levels of POE compared with control
group. No mortalities observed among the treatments along the experimental period.
Moreover, there were improvements for most hematological and biochemical parameters
due to feeding POE. Therefore, lipid profile significantly (P ≤ 0.05) decreased, when POE
increased in the diets. The findings showed that the histomorphometric parameters
significantly (P ≤0.05) improved due to feeding POE. The highest economical efficiency
observed for groups fed diets inclusion different levels of POE. Therefore, on the basis of
the current results, we concluded that adding by-product POE up to 30% to the quail diets
has no adverse effect on their productive performance or physiological status as well as
the addition of POE gets higher economic efficiency.