THE EFFECT OF AGE AND EGG SIZE OF JAPANESE QUAILS ON FERTILITY AND HATCHABILITY

Résumé

288-six weeks old Japanese quails at the point of lay were used to determine the effect of age and egg size on the fertility and hatchability of quail eggs after adjusting for three weeks. Eggs were taken daily from the birds with a mating ratio of one cock to four hens for a period of five days when the quails attained 9, 13, 17 weeks old respectively and sorted on the basis of small (<9g), medium (9-10g) and large eggs (>10g) using a sensitive electronic scale. The eggs were stored in a temperature of 15oC before setting in the incubator to inhibit embryonic development in an experiment that lasted for 12 weeks. The small, medium and large eggs collected at the corresponding ages of 9, 13 and 17 weeks were assigned into a 3 x 3 factorial arrangement in a completely randomized design having six replicates each. Results obtained revealed that percent fertility was highly significantly (P<0.01) affected by age with a fertility of 92.90% at 13 weeks followed by 89.92%, 82.91% at 9 and 17 weeks. The percent hatchability was significantly (P<0.05) affected by egg size and the best recorded in the medium eggs with 69.58% in relation to the large and small eggs having 64.95% and 63.62%, respectively. The fertility and hatchability were neither affected (p>0.05) by the interaction effects of age and egg size. In conclusion, the age of quails had significant effect on fertility of quail eggs whereas the hatchability was affected by egg size.