egg production traits and egg quality characteristics in black and brown plumage color lines of japanese quail

The present study was conducted to determine egg production traits and eggquality characteristics in black and brown lines of japanese quail. a total of500 quails comprising 400 females and 100 males obtained from twobreeding centers were raised according to the standard procedure forjapanese quail. they were grouped in according to their plumage colours.age at first egg-laying has been recorded. egg production and hen dayproduction (hdp) have also been calculated. additionally, samples of 240composite quail eggs, 60 eggs per line, have been randomly selectedat the age of 88, 89, and 90 days. those eggs were used to determine thequality of egg including egg weight, shell thickness, shell weight, shapeindex, air cavity, albumen index, yo lk index, haugh unit (hu), and yolk colorscore. furthermore, the data were analysed using general linear model (glm)and tukey’s test was p erformed to evaluate the pairwise differences amongquails. the results showed that egg production traits were not differentamong lines, except age at first egg-laying (p < 0.0001). moreover,brown plumage lines have higher egg weight, shell thickness, shell weight,shape index, yolk index, albumen index, hu, and yolk colour scorethan black plumage lines (p < 0.0001), on the other hand, egg air cavity ofblack plumage lines were higher than brown plumage lines, 1.71 versus 0.88mm (p < 0.0001). it can be c oncluded that brown plumage line has betterboth exterior and interior qualities of egg than black plumage line. thesefindings may be useful to determine appropriate breeding program for layingquail in the future.