Egg Production and Quality Indices of Quails Fed Tumeric-Garlic Supplemented Sorghum Diets

The present study was set up to investigate the replacement of maize with sorghum and its fortification by garlic and turmeric in quail diets to observe its effect on egg production and its qualities. A total of 640, six-weeks old adult quails comprising 40 quails per group were used at this phase in a mating ratio of 1:4 (4 cocks to 32 hens). They were arranged in a randomized complete block design in a 3 × 5+1 factorial experiment. To fortify the sorghum-based diets, turmeric and garlic meals were combined at five (5) different levels of: 0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00 %) and three (3) (0, 0.50 and 1.00%) levels, respectively, and added with the sorghum diet consisting of 15 combination groups. Data were collected on egg laid per day, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, egg mass, hen day production, egg external qualities and internal qualities. The result showed that maize was superior to sorghum in total eggs laid, total egg weight, eggs laid/day, hen day egg % and egg mass. However, garlic, turmeric and their interactions were significant (p<0.05) for total feed intake, total eggs laid, total egg weight and egg laid per day. Birds fed 0.25 % turmeric plus 0.50 % garlic performed poorly for most of the parameters under egg performance. Results for both internal and external egg quality parameters were not significantly (p>0.05) influenced by the energy source neither the turmeric and garlic supplementation. Eggs performance of quails fed 0.50 % garlic and 1.00 % turmeric sorghum-based diet (T10) compared favourably with those given maize. Apart from in shell weight and thickness, egg quality parameters were better in eggs fed sorghum, and sorghum supplemented with garlic and turmeric diets than in eggs of quails fed Maize (control) diet. Thus, sorghum bio-fortified with turmeric-garlic can replace maize in quail diets with no deleterious effect on egg production and qualitative traits.