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-This study was carried out to determine the effects of a carob (Ceratonia siliqua) byproduct (CB) supplement in diets for laying Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica) on performance and egg internal-external quality traits, fatty acid profile, and cholesterol content. A total of 225 female quail at 12 weeks of age were distributed into five treatment groups with three replications (15 birds in each replication). The following treatments were tested: 0% (control, no CB supplementation); 3% CB; 5% CB; 10% CB; and 15% CB in the diets. Feed and water were provided ad libitum to quail. The lighting program was 16 h light and 8 h dark. The experiment lasted 60 days. Treatments had no significant effects on final weight, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, egg production, and mortality. The external egg quality characteristics, shape index, shell weight, shell thickness, albumen index, yolk index, yolk weight, yolk fat, yolk color, yolk cholesterol, stearic acid, oleic acid, and heptadecanoic acid concentrations were not significantly influenced by CB supplementation to quail diets. Haugh unit, egg yolk total saturated fatty acids, total mono or polyunsaturated fatty acids, linoleic acid, gamma linolenic acid, palmitic, and palmitoleic acid contents were significantly influenced by the treatments. Carob byproduct can be used up to 15% in laying quail diets without any negative effects on performance, mortality, or internal egg quality traits.

Intensive production practices, faulty maintenance and feeding, unsuitable keeping conditions, antinutritional factors in feeds and similar abnormalities lead to irregularities in both hormone and enzyme systems in poultry. Especially, due to disorders in endocrine system, a specific hormone, melatonin, can not be produced or underproduced, and thus its metabolic and physiological functions are negatively affected in the organisms. Melatonin (ML) is one of the important hormones that prevent metabolic and physiological disorders in poultry but does not attract attention by poultry scientist. ML regulates the brain's biological clock, acts on respiration, circulation, excretion, reproduction and immunity system. ML helps regulate feed consumption, energy metabolism and body heat. It also provides elimination of free radicals in the body. ML stimulates growth hormone secretion and, thus, effects growth performance of poultry positively. It is considered necesary to focus more effectively on the melatonin hormone, which is a positive contribution to animal welfare by correcting metabolic-physiological disorders in poultry. In this review, the definition of melatonin, its interaction with other hormones, its effect on the physiological and metabolic functions of poultry were examined.

This study was conducted to investigate whether adding different levels of raw or differently processed chickpea into different diets of laying quails affected live weight, feed intake, feed efficiency, egg weight and internal and external egg quality. Chickpea was used as raw, autoclaved or microwave-processed, and it was involved in the diets on two different levels (20% and 40%). The sample was divided into 7 groups including the control, 20% and 40% raw, 20% and 40% autoclaved, and 20% and 40% microwaveprocessed groups. 336 ten-week-old female laying quails were used in the study, and the experiment continued for 19 weeks. In the study, the differences among the groups were insignificant in terms of live weight, feed intake, feed efficiency, egg weight and egg quality characteristics such as shell thickness, shell weight, yolk weight, yolk color and albumin index. The differences were significant in terms of the shape index, Haugh unit (p<0.05) and yolk index (p<0.01). Consequently, it was observed that different thermal processes on chickpeas did not usually have a significant effect on the yield performance of the quails, and the results that were obtained were similar to the other groups. However, it was determined that some egg quality characteristics were affected by the autoclaving and microwaving processes. Between the thermal processes, it may be stated that autoclaving provided better results.

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