Effects of <i>Moringa oleifera</i> leaf meal on fertility, egg quality and hatchability of Japanese quails

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to determine the effect of Moringa oleifera leaf meal (MOLM) on fertility, egg quality, and hatchability of Japanese quail eggs at the early stage of laying. One hun-dred and ninety-two (192) Japanese layer quails were randomly allocated to four (4) dietary treat-ments; T1, T2, T3 and T4 with 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% of MOLM partially replacing similar amounts of soybean meal respectively. There were 3 replicates for each treatment with 16 quails in each replicate, i.e. 4 males and 12 females in a completely randomized design. Both feed and water were provided ad-libitum each day. Eggs were collected two times daily (7am and 5pm). A total of 36 quail eggs were randomly selected and used for egg quality analysis, another batch of 480 eggs (40 eggs from each replicate) were incubated for 17 days, the hatched eggs were sorted out from unhatched eggs to determine fertility, hatchability and dead in shell. Unhatched eggs were then broken to check eggs that were unable to pip successfully. Data collected were organized in Excel and then analyzed using General Linear Model as described by Minitab (version 18.1). The means were separated using Tukey’s pairwise comparison with probability value set at 5%. There were no significant (p>0.05) differences for fertility, hatchability, and dead in shell and there were no sig-nificant (p>0.05) differences in egg quality parameters studied except for yolk colour: as the MOLM levels increased, the yellow yolk colour became deeper. Moringa oleifera leaf meal can be added to Japanese quail diets up to 15% as partial replacement for soybean meal with no adverse effects on egg quality, fertility and hatchability of quail eggs.