Abstract
This research examined effects of gender and dietary inclusion of date palm extract (DPE) on growth, carcass characteristics, oxidative status and serum characteristics of Japanese quail. One thousand chicks were allocated to five replicates of treatment and gender groups composed of 20 chicks. The treatments were a basal diet and four groups augmented with 0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75%, and 1.00% DPE. The interaction of gender and treatment was significant for bodyweight (BW) at 42 days, average daily bodyweight gain (BWG), feed intake (FI), weights of most carcass components, and the serum profile. Females had better performance to 42 days than males (P <0.05). In addition, females had higher hot and cold carcass weights, breast percentage, liver percentage, intestine percentage, total protein, albumin, triglyceride (TRIG), total antioxidant status (TAS), total oxidant status (TOS), and oxidative stress indexes (OSIs) (P <0.001). Males had higher percentages of hot carcass, cold carcass and heart, and their levels of cholesterol (CHOL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) values were greater than females (P <0.001). Birds fed 0.50% DPE grew faster, were more efficient, and had heavier live and carcass weights at 42 days than those fed the basal diet. However, treatment effects and their interaction with gender on growth, feed intake and the serum profile were unremarkable compared to the gender main effect. Dietary augmentation with 0.50% DPE might enhance the performance of quail between 14 and 42 days old.
Highlights
The use of antibiotics as growth promoters in poultry was banned in European Union countries in 2006 because of concern about antimicrobial resistance to pathogenic bacteria and the accumulation of antibiotic residues in poultry production (Castanon, 2007; Tufan & Arslan, 2020)
The effects of interaction and of the dietary treatments were relatively small compared with those of gender, which were highly significant from day 28 onwards (P
Feeding 0.50% or more date palm extract (DPE) increased Live bodyweight (LBW) from day 28 onwards relative to the basal diet
Summary
The use of antibiotics as growth promoters in poultry was banned in European Union countries in 2006 because of concern about antimicrobial resistance to pathogenic bacteria and the accumulation of antibiotic residues in poultry production (Castanon, 2007; Tufan & Arslan, 2020). Nearly 20% of this production is waste, and is not suitable for human consumption. This rate increases to 30% when it includes by-products from the date palm. Date palm waste and by-products constitute important nutritional food sources for animals (Sami et al, 2016; Al-Salhie et al, 2017) because of their antibacterial (Salem et al, 2018), anticancer, anti-inflammatory (El Abed et al, 2018), antilipidemic, antihyperglycemic (Hussein et al, 2015), hepatoprotective, and nephroprotective effects (Romano et al, 2013). The addition of dates and by-products to poultry rations increased growth and fattening performance (Abudabos et al, 2015; Attia & Attia, 2015; Tareen et al, 2017), affected protein metabolism positively (Mohammed, 2013), and had antilipidemic effects (Al-Harthi et al, 2009)
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