The effect of dietary supplementation and withdrawal of ginger and garlic on egg production and quality traits in laying quails

This study was carried out to examine the effect of dietary addition and withdrawal of dried ginger and garlic powder, either singly or in combination on egg production performance and egg quality traits in laying quails. The experiment was conducted on 180, eight week old laying quails following 2x3 factorial design. The laying quails were randomly assigned to nine groups of 20 birds each. The experiment was conducted for nine weeks (0 to VI weeks- dietary addition; VII to IX weeks- dietary withdrawal of ginger and garlic). The corn-soya meal (CS) based basal diet was supplemented with desired levels of dried ginger powder 0%, 0.25%, 0.50% and garlic 0%, 1%, 3% to formulate the nine experimental diets. The results revealed that the production performance like body weight, feed intake, feed conversion ratio and egg production of laying quails did not alter significantly (P > 0.05) due to different dietary treatments during both supplementation and withdrawal phase. Similarly, egg quality traits like egg weight, egg shell weight, egg shell index, egg shell thickness, egg shell specific gravity, albumen index, Haugh unit and egg yolk index were also similar in all the experimental diets during both supplementation and withdrawal phase. The results revealed that dietary addition and withdrawal of dried ginger and garlic powder did not alter the production parameters and egg quality traits of laying quails.