Effects of Beijing grass in diet on egg performance, egg quality, humoral immunity and carcass characteristics in Japanese quails

Beijing grass (Bj. grass: Murdannia loriformis) is widely used in patients and was found to have pharmalogical effects as immunomodulator and anticancer. Thus, we aimed to demonstrate its effects in quail as a model for poultry application. We evaluated the performances using Bj. grass in diets of laying quails aged 7-12 weeks, namely, (1) egg performance, (2) egg quality, (3) humoral immunomodulation and (4) carcass characteristics. The performances in laying quails were studied using 244 seven-week-old female quails which were left from feeding diets containing Bj. grass during growing period and were maintained in the same treatments. The experiment used a completely randomized design and animals were divided into 5 treatments consisting of 4 replications with 12-14 heads each. Quails were assigned to each dietary treatment as follows: No Bj. grass and no vaccination (control) (T1), No Bj. grass and vaccination (T2), Bj. grass 3 percent and vaccination (T3), Bj. grass 6 percent and vaccination (T4), control diet and 10 percent Bj. grass juice (w/v) and vaccination (T5). These birds were boostered with Newcastle disease vaccine at 7th week after the first vaccination in the growing period. Approximately 25 percent of quails were bled for determination of packed cell volume, gamma globulin levels and ND-HI titers. All quails were put to sleep at 15 weeks to carcass characteristics examined. We found that Bj. grass could be used as high as 6 percent in the diet without abnormal clinical signs. It was noticed that 3 percent Bj. grass tended to yield best performances among Bj. grass formulated groups (T3 and T4) and Bj. grass juiced group (T5) but showed no differences from the control group. (P GT 0.05). There were no differences in packed cell volume and gamma globulin level. ND-HI titers of Bj. grass 3 percent (T3) were higher than other groups (2.33+-1.97 log sub(2)) but did not reach protection level. For carcass characteristics, there was a doserelated reduction of abdominal fat. (P=0.000).