UTILISATION OF HOUSEFLY (MUSCA DOMESTICA) MAGGOT MEAL IN THE DIETS OF JAPANESE QUAILS (Coturnix coturnix japanica)

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of replacing housefly maggot (Musca domestica) meal (HFM) with fish meal (FM) on the performance of Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix japanica). Two hundred (200) one week old Japanese quails were randomly assigned to five dietary treatments of forty birds with four replicates of 10 birds per replicate in a completely randomized design. The diets contained maggot meal (MM) substituting 4% fish meal (FM) at graded levels of 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100% and were designated as T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 respectively. The data obtained were analysed using GenStat Version 17.1 and means were separated using Tukey HSD. Results obtained from the experiment revealed that the inclusion of maggots in the diets of quails significantly (p<0.05) affected body weight gains (BWG), feed intake (FI) and cost per weight gain (C/BW). Nutrient digestibility of the birds indicated that CP, and EE were not significantly (p<0.05) affected by the experimental diets. This study has shown that house maggot meal (HMM) could replace an expensive conventional animal protein (fishmeal) in feed formulation for quail, but further investigations are needed to explore its full potential as protein substitute in other livestock.