Effect of Supplementation of Probiotic and Enzymes on Performance of Japanese Quails

The present study was carried out for six weeks on 135 day old quail chicks to study the effect of supplementation of probiotic and enzymes on growth performance. The dietary treatments comprised of T1 – control i.e. corn – soya based diet as control, whereas T2 and T3 supplemented with probiotic and multienzyme respectively. The body weight gain and feed conversion efficiency was significantly (P


Introduction
The meat type quail rearing is common practice to bridge a gap between present demand and supply of animal protein.The efficiency of broiler quails to convert the feed into meat, play a key role in economics of broiler industry.There fore, it is highly essential to improve feed efficiency of quails to produce meat economically, for this it is essential to add feed additives such as probiotic and enzymes to aim to improve digestibility and bioavailability of nutrients.
Probiotic is a live microbial feed supplement which beneficially affects the host by improving its intestinal microbial balance (Fuller, 1989): Enzymes are involved in all anabolic and catabolic pathways of digestion and metabolism which helps in improved FCR (Mujeeb Ather, 2001): In view of this, it was considered worth wide to undertake a study to evaluate the effect of probiotic and enzymes on growth performance of quails.

Materials and Methods
One hundred and thirty five day old quail chicks were randomly divided into three treatment groups comprising three replications and fifteen chicks in each.The dietary treatments were comprising of T 1 control diet with corn-soya based and T 2 supplemented with T 1 + Probiotic starter @100 gm / ton of feed, finisher @ 50 gm / ton of feed and T 3 with enzymes @ 350 gm/ ton of feed.Diets were prepared as per ICAR standards (Panda et al., 2002): The chemical analysis of experimental diets was carried out as per AOAC (1990) which is presented in Table 1.The data collected during the study and analyzed as per "Snedecor and Cochran (1994) by using, "Factorial and Completely Randomized Design" (FCRD).

Results and Discussion
Supplementation of probiotic and enzymes revealed significant (P<0.01)improvement in live body weights and weight gain as compared to control (Table 2): Significantly higher growth in probiotic group may be attributed to inhibition of growth of the enteropathpgens in the gut by decreasing the intestinal P H and efficient utilization of nutrients by the beneficial microbes.Asmita Kumari et al (2001) and Kumaraj et al (1997) reported significant increase in body weight in quails.Straznicka (1992), Wantia (1993) and Edwin et al (2004), reported improved live weight due to multienzymes in diet.The feed consumption was significantly lower in probiotic fed groups and comparable with enzymes group, might be due to better utilization of nutrients.Pakhira and Samanta (2006) and Asmita Kumari et al (2001) reported lower feed intake on lactobacillus in dietof quails.It is also observed that quail receiving the diet with probiotic and enzymes revealed significantly (P< 0.05) better feed conversion efficiency as compared to control.Thee findings are in accordance with Asmita Kumari et al (2001) and Elongvan et al (2004) who also reported better FCR on feeding of probiotic and enzymes in quails.The dressing percentage was also better in probiotic and enzyme supplemented diet and collaborates with Rathi (2003) and Kumar et al (2005) who observed increased dressing percentage by inclusion of probiotic and multienzymes.Similarly nitrogen retention was also maximum in probiotic and enzymes group comprising to control and accordance with Rathi (2003) also revealed higher N 2 retention on probiotic and enzymes fed groups.
It is concluded that probiotic and enzymes can be successfully incorporated in diet of Japanese quails a growth promoters.