The Effect of Adding the Cracked Corn to The Ration at Finishing Period on Fattening and Morphological Traits in Male Quails

Objective: This research was conducted to determine the fattening performance of egg-type male quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica) sorted as non-breeders after 35 days using three different finisher rations. Material and Methods: Three different rations were used as finisher feed: cracked corn (CC), broiler chick feed (BCF), and cracked corn-chick feed (1:1) mixture (CC-BCF) for fattening 270 male quails. Quail fattening started with an average weight of 198 g and was carried out in cage pens with 3 replicates in each group and 30 male quails in each replicate. Quails were weighed individually on the 5th and 10th (40 and 45 days of age) days of the experiment. When the quails reached 45 days of age, some morphological characteristics were measured in a total of 135 quails, 15 randomly from each pen. Results: The mean body weights of the CC, BCF, and CC-BCF groups at 40 and 45 days of age were determined 202, 227, and 223 g and 201, 232, and 229 g, respectively. While the CC group had the lowest fattening performance (P0.05). In terms of carcass ratio, the highest value (75.2%) was observed in the BCF group and the lowest value (73.6%) in the CC group (P0.05). The lowest mean in terms of breast width (32.9 mm) was observed in the CC group, and the highest mean in terms of breast length (67.3 mm) was observed in the CC-BCF group (P