Shekhmous Hussen^*(1) and Jameela Saleh⁽¹⁾

(1). Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Agriculture, Duhok University, KR-Iraq. (*Correspondence author: Dr. Shekhmous Hussen. E-Mail: sheikhmous68@gmail.com).

Received: 11/10/2018                                Accepted: 24/12/2018

Abstract

A total of 1296 one day old chicks of nine genotypes of quail were used in this experiment. The chicks were hatched and reared at the Poultry Farm of Animal Production Department, College of Agriculture, University of Duhok, Kurdistan region-Iraq. The studied genotypes were resulted of three quail lines (White-W, Light brown-Lb and Dark brown-Db) using full diallel cross design. This research was conducted to investigate the productive performance of nine quail genotypes resulted from full diallel cross design. The characters were: live body weight (BW), body weight gain (WG), feed intake (FI), feed conversion ratio (FCR), egg weight (EW), egg number (EN), egg mass (EM), mortality rate (MR%), fertility (F%) and hatchability (H%). The results follow: BWs showed significant differences (p<0.01) among the studied genotypes and between both sexes in BWs. Pooled WG, pooled FI and FCR for both growth and laying periods didn’t differ significantly among the studied genotypes (p>0.05). Egg weight among the studied genotypes differ significantly just at the first week of laying (p<0.05), which may due to the variation among BWs of the studied genotypes. The cross W*Db recorded significantly (p<0.01) the lowest mortality rate (4.7 %); while the reciprocal cross Db*W recorded the highest rate (19.3 %). The highest fertility percentage (91.7 %) was achieved by DbDb genotype; while the highest hatchability percentage (92.6 %) was achieved by LbLb genotype. As conclusion, it may use W quail line as sire and Db line as dam, with possibility to alternative with Lb line (as dam with W line or as sire with Db line) in mating system to achieve the best productive performance.

Key words: Quail, full diallel cross, productive performance, fertility and hatchability.

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