Walnut Meal as an Excellent Source of Energy and Protein for Growing Japanese Quails.

The present study was designed to study the chemical composition, apparent and true metabolizable energy values of the walnut meal and to evaluate the effects of different levels of walnut meal (0, 10, 20 and 30%) on Japanese quail's growth performance, blood metabolites, relative weight of different organs, malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration in breast meat and egg yolks' cholesterol. This study was conducted as a completely randomize design with 288 unsexed Japanese quails randomly dividing into 4 treatments with 4 replicates of 18 birds each. As a result of this study, no significant differences were found for feed intake and feed conversion ratio (P>0.05), except the birds fed 30% walnut meal showed lower weight gain compared to the control at 7-21 days of age (P<0.05). There were no significant differences in serum glucose, uric acid, serum aspartate aminotranspherase (AST) and alanine aminotranspherase (ALT) activities between different dietary treatments. The serum low density lipoprotein (LDL), cholesterol and triglyceride tended to decrease linearly (P<0.01) as the walnut meal levels were increased. The serum high density lipoprotein (HDL) level in quails fed 10% walnut meal were significantly higher than control group (P<0.05). Consumption of different levels of walnut meal significantly decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration in breast meat of chicks aged 42 d (P<0.01). Different dietary treatments had no effect on the relative weight of different organs and carcass traits. In general, walnut meal is a good source of energy (apparent metabolizable energy corrected for nitrogen (AMEn) 3689 kcal/kg), oil (23%) and crude protein (40%) and could be used up to 20% for young chicks and 30% for older chicks, without any adverse effect on growth performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]