Although chicken is the major source of meat and eggs in the country, yet efforts are underway for exploiting other suitable and cheap sources for the production of meat and eggs. Towards this end, quail farming seems to be the most promising and one of the best alternate sources for production of meat and eggs. It was revealed in a study conducted by Mr Yassar Abbas for his PhD thesis, who hopes the new research would bring a great revolution. He said quail (batair) was the smallest specie of order Galliforms, although many quail breeds were recognised round the globe hence Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix Japonica) was famous for commercial point of view.
For the last few decade Japanese quail is considered as best avian model specie in the field of science because of better growth rate, higher egg production, shorter generation interval and higher resistance to disease. Mr Yassar Abbas who is a researcher at Avian Research and Training Centre told that research had been conducted to evaluate the effect of different feed restriction regimes on growth performance and economic efficiency of Japanese quails. The researchers believe that this research will make a strong impact in the commercial quail farming sector of Pakistan. This research was supervised by Dr Abdul Waheed Sahota, Prof Dr Muhammad Akram and Prof Dr Khalid Javed at University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore.
It was revealed that three-hour fed, one-hour off quails exhibited better gain in terms of body weight against optimum feed with better feed conversion ratio and efficiency and reduced mortality turning into the highest percentage profit compared to full fed and other restricted groups. However, close bred stocks had similar growth and economic efficiency in Japanese quails. In his concluding remarks the researcher told that feed restriction technique could be effective to improve the growth of quail and ultimately reduce cost of production. Based on the findings of this study, the researcher suggested that Japanese quails might be subjected to feed restriction of one-hour after second week followed by feed restriction of two-hour after third weeks of age in order to improve growth performance.
YASSAR ABBAS, DR ABDUL WAHEED SAHOTA, DR MUHAMMAD AKRAM
UVAS, Lahore
