Protein digestibility and energy metabolizability of finger millet and pearl millet grains in cockerels and Japanese quails

Twelve adult white leghorn cockerels (25 weeks of age), and 60 adult Japanese quails were used in the present study to determine the apparent and true protein digestibility as well as apparent and true energy metabolizability in finger millet and pearl millet grains. Pearl millet was fed to cockerels as per Farrell's “Rapid ME method” after 48 h fasting. Finger millet was force fed (50g) to cockerels as per “Sibbald method”. Both the test ingredients were offered to quails as per “Farrell's method”. No significant difference was observed in nitrogen corrected apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn) and nitrogen corrected true metabolizable energy (TMEn) values of pearl millet. In comparison to cockerels, Japanese quails recorded significantly lower (P< 0.01) AMEn and TMEn values in both the cereal grains. The true protein digestibility of pearl millet in Japanese quails was significantly higher (P< 0.05) than the cockerels (95.97 vs 88.82%). In contrast, the apparent protein digestibility of finger millet in Japanese quails was markedly lower (P< 0.01) than the cockerels (64.35 vs 73.6%). The present observations indicated that the nutrients of pearl millet and finger millet grains were better utilized by cockerels as compared to Japanese quails. Overall, the results revealed that the metabolizable energy and protein digestibility values of millet grains determined using cockerels might not be suitable for application in practical quail diet formulation.