Department of Animal Nutrition Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana (Punjab)
An experiment with an attempt to replace maize with wheat and rice kani from the diets of growing quails was conducted on 500, one week old commercial quails. The birds were grouped into 10 groups of 40 birds in each in a way that average weight of all the groups was similar. Maize based control diet (T1) was formulated. Four experimental diets replacing 25 and 50 percent of maize of control diet with wheat (T2 and T3) or rice kani (T4 and T5) were formulated and fed ad libitum to a duplicate group of quails up to 5th week. Significant (P<0.05) effects of replacing maize with wheat or rice kani were recorded. The final body weights of quails obtained by feeding diet (T5) replacing 50 percent of maize with rice kani was significantly (P<0.05) more than all other dietary regimes except quails fed wheat diet replacing 50 percent maize. 25 percent replacement of maize with wheat showed significantly (P<0.05) higher body weights than the control and the diet containing rice kani replacing 25 percent of maize. The gain in weight of the quails fed control diet (T1) and diets replacing 25 percent of maize either with wheat or rice kani were significantly (P<0.05) less than the other dietary treatments. The quails fed diet replacing 50 percent of maize with wheat showed significantly (P<0.05) more gain in weight than the quails fed diet replacing 50 percent of maize with rice kani. No significant differences in the feed consumption due to dietary treatments were observed. FCR in quails fed diet replacing 50 percent of maize with wheat was significantly (P<0.01) better. It was concluded that wheat and rice kani both can replace 50 percent of the dietary maize without affecting the growth performance of the quails.
Quails, wheat, rice kani, growth
