Cardanol in the feeding of meat-type quail breeders.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the inclusion of cardanol in the diet of quails on productive performance, egg quality, reproductive performance, and progeny performance. A total of three hundred European quail breeders of 32weeks of age, with average body weights of 305.98g, were housed in laying cages in groups (4 females and 1 male), following a distribution in a completely randomized design with 5 treatments and 6 replications of 10 quails, being the experimental unit constituted by the set of two cages. The treatments consisted of diets with 0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, and 1.00% of cardanol. There was reduction in the performance of the quail with the inclusion of 1.00% of cardanol in the diet when compared to the control treatment, while egg weight and egg mass were lower in the treatments with 0.75 and 1.00% of cardanol, respectively. It was observed that there was decrease in the specific gravity, and increase in color and TBARS value of the yolk in all treatments with cardanol. The inclusion of 0.50% of cardanol decreased the percentage of albumen, and increased the percentage of yolk, while the shell thickness decreased with 0.75%. The weight of the incubated eggs and the chick weight at hatching were lower in the treatments with 0.75 and 1.00% of cardanol. In the evaluation of the progeny performance, it was found that the weight at 7days of age of chicks from breeders fed the diet containing 1.00% of cardanol was decreased when compared to the chicks from breeders fed the control diet. It was concluded that the inclusion of cardanol did not present benefits to the quail breeders.