Effect of feeding different levels of dietary copper on production performance, egg quality traits, serum and egg yolk cholesterol content in laying quails
2017
Deo, Chandra | Mandal, A.B. | Tyagi, Praveen K
An experiment was conducted with CARI Uttam laying quails (n=120) during 11 to 24 weeks of age to evaluate optimum dietary copper (Cu) level for egg production, egg quality traits, serum and egg yolk cholesterol content. A basal diet having 20% protein and 2700 kcal ME/kg and 5mg Cu/kg was prepared. Five other experimental diets were formulated by addition of Cu sulphate to achieve 10, 15, 100, 150 and 200 mg Cu/kg diet. Each of such diet was offered as mash ad-libitum to laying quails randomly divided into six treatment groups with 10 replicates of two birds each reared in quail laying cages. Significantly (P<0.05) lower egg production was observed at 200mg Cu/kg diet than those fed other diets. The body weight change, feed conversion ratio, egg weight and egg quality traits did not differ significantly due to different dietary treatments. The cholesterol content in egg yolk was significantly(P<0.05) lower in groups fed diets containing 100, 150 and 200 mg Cu/kg diets than other dietary groups at both 45 and 90 days of feeding period. The serum total cholesterol content was also significantly (P<0.05) lower in 100, 150 and 200 mg Cu/kg dietary groups. Based on the results, it was concluded that for optimum production performance and egg quality traits laying quails required 5 mg Cu/kg diet, but feeding copper at 100 mg/kg diet, decreased the egg yolk and serum cholesterol content by 19% and 27%, respectively without affecting the production performance.
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