Calcium Requirement and Vitamin D Supplementation in Meat-Type Quail at First Stage of Growth

Abstract

Currently, feed formulations for quail are based on foreign data or data from other species; this undermines productivity with the use of excessive or deficient levels of some nutrients. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the nutritional requirement levels of calcium (Ca) and supplementation vitamin D in meat-type quail from 1 to 14 d of age. The experiment was a 4 × 4 factorial arrangement of treatments (levels of Ca: 0.42, 0.58, 0.74 and 0.90% and levels of vitamin D: 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000 IU) with 3 replicate pens and 43 quails per pen. Weight gain increased quadratically with increased levels of Ca and vitamin D; this variable yielded estimated levels of 0.73% Ca and 2,883 IU vitamin D. There was no Ca x vitamin D interaction effect on bone variables. Bone Ca, bone phosphorus, bone ash, femoral bone strength, tibial bone strength and the femoral Seedor index increased quadratically with an increase in Ca levels. These variables yielded estimated values of 0.78, 0.71, 0.78, 0.77, 0.83, and 0.71% Ca, respectively. It is concluded that the requirements of Ca and vitamin D for the maximum weight gain of meat-type quails, in the period from one to 14 days of age, were 0.73% Ca (p=0.001) and 2,883 IU vitamin D (p=0.02), respectively.

Influence of Calcium and Nonphytate Phosphorus (NPP) on Meat-Type Quail’s Growth, Carcass Features, and Tibia Indices

“…Among the 12 essential elements for poultry, calcium and phosphorus are the two most important elements which highly attract nutritionists, researchers, and producers who are associated with the poultry industry (Alagawany et al 2020(Alagawany et al , 2021. These two are accounted for at least 50% of bone ash, so it can be expressed that these are the fundamental skeletal components and are also directly or indirectly participated in both quantitative and qualitative metabolic processes of poultry animals (Mc Donald et al 2002;Rao et al 2006;Gautier et al 2017;Perine et al 2022).…”