Study Regarding the Multiple Stress Influence over Productive Performances of Laying Quails (Coturnix Coturnix Japonica)

Abstract

Being acquainted with the fact that in the field of quails breeding the literature is still deficient and that these birds have a very intense metabolism, which makes them more sensitive to stress in comparison with other species, a research has been conducted on a total number of 3368 of mixed and meat quails divided in 6 differentiated lots based on age and productive specialization. They have been exposed for 5 hours to multiple stresses (without light, ventilation, water, food). It can be affirmed that the stress effect over the quails that are in the first part of the laying curve (until the three laying month) is affecting less the laying process, but influences more their death rate. The situation is reversed for the quails that are in the second part of the laying curve (after the sixth month of laying), the effect of multiple stress applied to those birds being more influential on the laying process and less in the death rate. The consumption of compound feed and the feed conversion have varied very little while the birds were under stress, with the exception of the most elder lot, that was in the XIIth month of laying, for which the feed conversion rose by 14% in the week that followed the stress conditions, getting up with 22,5% bigger in the fourth week after the applied stress, while the laying has been reduced proportionally with less than half of these values.