FATTENING PERFORMANCE AND SLAUGHTER TRAITS IN MALE PHARAOH JAPANESE QUAILS

The study was carried out with 72 growing male Japanese quails from the meat Pharaoh breed. Fattening performance of birds was monitored between 15 and 35 days of age. At 35 days of age, slaughter analysis was done as well as proximate analysis of breast and thigh muscles. The analysis of results showed that during the experimental period, the average feed conversion ranged between 3.31 and 3.64 kg/kg weight gain, while 1 kg weight gain was achieved with 46.70 MJ metabolisable energy and 721 g crude protein. After 28 days of age, feed conversion decreased almost twice, making fattening ineffective. At 35 days of age the average birds' weight was 237.11 +/- 2.826 g. The deskinned grill percentage varied from 55.5 - 62.4% of live body weight. The relative proportion of breast with bone was 44.5 - 50.5% of grill weight, and of thighs: 24.7 - 30.4%. The percentage of manually deboned breast meat from grill weight was from 38.7 and 44.7% while of thigh meat: 20.5 - 24.9%.