The effect of feeding gamma-irradiated cottonseed meal on performance, yield serum lipid profile and liver enzymes in Japanese quails

This experiment carried out to investigate the effect of feeding gamma-irradiated cottonseed meal on yield, serum lipid profile and liver enzymes in Japanese quails. A total of 384 Japanese quails were used in a completely randomized design with four experimental treatments with six replications and sixteen quail per replication for 35 days. Experimental diets included diets without gamma ray irradiated cottonseed meal (control treatment) and diets containing levels of 6, 12, and 18% protein of the diet with gamma irradiated cottonseed meal. At the end of the experimental period (35 days), feed intake, weight gain, feed conversion ratio were calculated. On the last day of the experimental period, blood samples were taken from a vein of two male quail whose body weight was close to the body weight of each replicate. The results of the effect of experimental treatments on feed intake show that there is a statistically significant difference between treatments (p<0.05). With the increase of irradiated meal in the diet composition, the amount of feed consumption in quails increased significantly (p<0.05). So that the highest amount of feed consumption belonged to the group receiving 18% of irradiated cotton seed meal with 613.85 g and the lowest amount of feed consumption related to the control treatment was 591.46 g (P<0.05). The mean weight gain in the whole rearing period was significantly different between the experimental treatments, so that the results show that the weight gain of chickens increased with increasing the level of irradiated cottonseed meal (p<0.05). The highest weight gain belonged to the birds fed with 18% of irradiated cottonseed meal with 217.60 g and the lowest weight gain belonged to the control group with 204.30 g (p<0.05). Concentrations of cholesterol, triglycerides, VLDL-C, HDL-C and LDL-C in serum of avian birds were not affected by experimental treatments. Therefore, this processing method can increase the use of cottonseed meal in poultry feed and increase the capacity to use cottonseed to replace soybean meal.