Abstract :

I

n poultry intensive production system, stoking density is an inevitable practice. Thus, this study was designed to investigate the negative effects of high stoking density on quail growth performance, blood constituents and gut microbial count, and whether vitamin E and selenium supplementations have potential effects on enhancing the bird performance under high stoking density. A total of 225 Japanese quail at eight days of age were randomly allocated to five experimental groups (45 chicks each), with three replicates per group (15 chicks each). The groups formed low stoking control group (80 birds/m²)as the negative control (N-Control), the high stoking control group (100 birds/m²) as the positive control (P-Control), and three groups having high stoking density (100 birds/m²) and supplemented with either 200 mg vitamin E/kg diet or 0.3 mg selenium/kg diet or 100 mg vitamin E and 0.15 mg selenium/kg diet. High stoking density negatively affected body weight gain and feed conversion ratio compared to the low stoking density. Blood calcium, phosphorus and tibia ash and tibia calcium decreased significantly with high stoking density. The supplementation of diet with vitamin E and selenium separately or combined, under high stoking density, improved quail body weight gain and feed conversion. Blood calcium and phosphorus levels and tibia calcium and phosphorus contents significantly increased with different diet supplementations compared to the non-supplemented high stoking density control. Vitamin E and selenium supplementations significantly reduced ileum total microbial count and E-coli count. The result revealed that high stoking density impaired quail performance, but vitamin E and selenium and their combination can be used to improve quail performance under intensive production system. 

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