Line crossing’s effect on the hatching performance of Japanese quail

Abstract

Seedlings are one of the factors affecting egg production in quails and the possible efforts to obtain superior seeds include crossing. Therefore, this study was conducted to observe the hatching performance of Japanese quails subjected to line crossing. The materials used were hatching eggs produced by a crossbreeding between the brown male and black female species. Twenty brown male and eighty black female quails were used to produce hatching eggs with a male-to-female ratio of 1: 4. Up to 242 and 239 hatching eggs obtained from Cross 1 and 2 respectively were used. The t-test analysis results were not significantly different (P>0.05), where egg weight = 0.155 and hatching weight = 0.6405. However, the egg index of 0.02617 and the hatching length of 0.02589 were significantly different (P<0.05). At Cross 1, the low hatching mortality was 9.2%, and the high hatching quality was 83.88%. Generally, it was discovered that the products in Cross 1 and 2 have the same performance in terms of hatching weight, mortality, and quality, as well as the egg weight but the line crossing affected the egg index and hatching time. These results are expected to assist the development of a quail breeding strategy in the future.