Effects of Different Dietary Levels of Algae Chromochloris zofingiensis on Growth Performance and Meat Quality of Japanese Quail

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of different levels of Algae on performance and meat quality in Japanese quail. For this purpose, the numbers of 306 pieces of 3-days age of Japanese quail were used in a completely randomized design by; 6 experimental treatments, 3 replicates and 17 chickens per replication. The experimental treatments comprised different levels of Algae as; T1: no Algae (control group), T2; 0.05 %, T3: 0.1 %, T4: 0.15%, T5: 0.20 %and T5: 0.25% of this Algae was added to the basic diet. In addition to measuring yield performance at 35 days of age, 4 pieces of quail in both sexes (males and females) were randomly selected and slaughtered from each replicate for evaluation of meat quality. Our results showed that the effect of different levels of Algae in quail’s diets doesn’t have any significant effect on average body weight gaining, feed intake, feed conversion ratio and live weights (p > 0.05). Feeding different levels of Algae had significant effect on carcass weight (p < 0.05). Also, feeding other levels of Algae had significant effect on carcass yield rate (p < 0.05). Although, there was no significant difference between all treatments for meat malondialdehyde index (p > 0.05) But, it had significant effect on meat pH, water holding capacity and blood loss percentage between treatments (p < 0.05). In general, the results revealed that using Algae at level of % 0.1 of the diet could be effective for improving performance and meat quality in Japanese quail.