Divergent selection towards body weight and betaine supplementation on quails performance in tropical environment

¹ Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta 57126, Indonesia
² Center for Biotechnology and Biodiversity Research and Development, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta 57126, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: ratriyanto@staff.uns.ac.id

Abstract

Initial body weight may affect animal performance. This study investigated the effect of divergent selection based on body weight and betaine supplementation on performance of quails in the tropical environment. In total, 900 7-day-old female Japanese quails were divided into 30 cages of 30 birds in a 3×2 factorial design. The first factor was body weight (Random, High, and Low), and the second factor was betaine supplementation (0% and 0.14%), resulting in 6 treatments. Performance data were collected for 2 periods of 28 days during the laying phase. The variables observed included feed consumption, egg production, egg weight, and feed conversion. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance and continued with Duncan’s Test for significant results. The results showed that there was no interaction between body weight and betaine supplementation on quails’ performance. Random body weight produced more eggs and the highest feed efficiency than Low body weight (P<0.05), although the result did not differ from High body weight. Betaine supplementation enhanced egg weight (P<0.05) than the non-supplemented group but did not affect other variables. It is concluded that Random and High weight and betaine supplementation can be applied to optimize the performance of quails in a tropical environment.