Effect of the Addition of Bee Pollen at Different Levels to the Growing Quails Diets on Performance and Serum Parameters

Abstract

The current research was conducted to determine the effects of different levels of bee pollen addition to growing quail diets on performance, carcass and serum biochemical parameters. In the study, a total of 240 quail chicks of day-old were randomly distributed to six treatment groups of 40 quail chicks each with four replicates. Treatment diets were prepared by adding 0, 3, 6, 9, 12 or 15 g/kg bee pollen to the basal diet and quails were fed with treatment diets during the 42-day experiment. At the end of the experiment, performance parameters such as body weight, body weight gain, feed intake and mortality were not affected by the treatments, while the feed conversion ratio was significantly improved with the supplementation of 9 g/kg bee pollen to the diet. Among the parameters of the carcass, the relative weights of the carcass, breast and thigh+drumstick were significantly affected by the addition of bee pollen to the diet at different levels. Treatments affected only albumin concentration among serum biochemical parameters, it decreased significantly in the groups added bee pollen at the level of 3 or 9 g/kg compared to the control group. According to the results of the experiment, it can be said that the adding 9 g/kg of bee pollen to the growing quail diet has positive effects on feed conversion ratio, one of the performance parameters.