growth performance and the intestine morphometry of japanese quail that fed diets supplemented with vitamin e and selenium

Background: small intestine and peripheral organs are the main organs for digestion and absorption in the gastrointestinal tract. objectives: to investigate effects of different levels of vitamin e and selenium on growth performance and small intestine morphometry in japanese quail. methods: a total of 405 mixed sex japanese quails were randomly allocated into 9 experimental groups by 3×3 factorial design (3 replications and 15 chicken per pen) using vitamin e (0, 150 and 300 mg/kg) and sodium selenium (0, 0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg feed) for the entire study. then, feed intake, body weight gain and food conversion ratio were recorded on days 17-21, 22-35 and 17-35 of the study. at day 35 of the study, 3 birds were randomly selected from each replication, slaughtered and various sections of small intestine (10, 50 and 90% of small intestine length) sampled for morphometry characteristics. villi height and crypts depth were measured microscopically. results: according to the results, different levels of vitamin e and selenium supplements had no effect on growth performance (p>0.05). also, supplementation of diet with vitamin e and selenium significantly increased villi height and crypts depth in various sections of small intestine on day 35 (p<0.05). conclusions: these results suggest vitamin e and selenium supplemented diets had beneficial effect on small intestine morphometry characteristics in japanese quail.