Volume 3 (Issue 2) 2023 Article 9

ABSTRACT:

The research was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation of Telfairiaoccidentalis leaves on egg production traits and egg quality traits of Japanese quail. A total of fortyeight (48) six weeks old female Japanese quail were randomly selected from an existing flock anddistributed into 4 treatments (A,B,C,D) of 12 birds each in 3 replicates. The formulated basal dietcontained 23%CP and 2800kcal/kg of Energy. Treatment A (basal diet and 0% antibiotic and 0% T.occidentalis as negative control), treatment B (basal diet with antibiotics, 0% T. occidentalis aspositive control), treatment C (basal diet with 0.2% inclusion T. occidentalis with no antibiotic) andtreatment D (basal diet with 0.4% inclusion T. occidentalis with no antibiotic). The experimentlasted for five (5) weeks. Data were obtained on egg production and egg quality traits. Dataobtained were subjected to analysis of variance using SPSS package. The result revealed nosignificant differences (p<0.05) among the treatment means in egg production and egg qualitytraits even though there were numerical differences among them. It was concluded that T.occidentalis supplementation in quail diet compares favorably with antibiotics and therefore maybe used as a replacement for antibiotics in Japanese quail.