Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Veterinary Science, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad-500 030, India.
1Forms part of the Ph.D. thesis submitted by the first author to Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University, Tirupati-517 502, India.
Data on 164 Japanese quails were utilized to study the effect of strains, hatches and sex of chicks on pre-slaughter weight and weights of carcass after bleeding, dressed carcass, eviscerated carcass, inedible and edible offals and various carcass cuts. The Black strain was superior to Brown for all the characters except the breast weight. Significant hatch effect was observed for the pre-slaughter weight, dressed weight, eviscerated carcass, inedible offals, heart and gizzard. The sexual dimorphism was not evident for any of the characters studied, except pre-slaughter weight. Majority of the carcass traits were medium to highly heritable.
