A farmer can enhance production of meat and eggs from quail parent flocks through lysine phase feeding with reducing cost of production. It was revealed in the research conducted by Mr. Yassar Abbas for his PhD thesis in the department of Poultry Production at Avian Research and Training Centre, University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore. This research was supervised by Dr. Abdul Waheed Sahota, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Akram and Prof. Dr. Khalid Javed. While talking about the importance of quail (Btair) Mr. Yassar told that Japanese quail was the smallest avian specie used as model laboratory animal due to its faster growth rate, better egg production, and high resistance to disease and shorter generation interval. Researcher told that research has been conducted to evaluate growth performance and economic efficiency among different closebred stocks of Japanese quail supplemented with different lysine regimens. The group A was provided the diet containing 1.3% lysine throughout the grow out period of 28 days, while the group B with 1.4% lysine up to the age of 14 days and then 1.2% up to the age of 28 days. The group C was split into threephases i.e., 0-9, 10-19 and 20-28 days which were supplemented with 1.5, 1.3 and 1.1% lysine respectively.
Researcher said that his team found the promising results in this regard; the quails in three phase dietary lysine regimen had the maximum feed intake, gained the highest body weight and resulted into best FCR and feed efficiency leading to maximum profit margin followed by 2 and 1 phase program. However, close bred stockshad same growth and economics efficiency in Japanese quail. On the basis of these conclusions researcher suggested that future trial may be planned by employing 4 lysine dietary regimens having 1 week each. Phase feeding can be an effective measure to reduce dietary costs without losing performance and can be resulted into more number of chicks which ultimately increase the profit as compared to single phase feeding for all grow up period.
YASSAR ABBAS, DR ABDUL WAHEED SAHOTA, DR MUHAMMAD AKRAM
UVAS, Lahore
