Walnut Meal as an Excellent Source of Energy and Protein for Growing Japanese Quails

The present study was designed to study the chemical composition, apparent and true metabolizable energy values of the walnut meal and to evaluate the effects of different levels of walnut meal (0, 10, 20 and 30%) on Japanese quail's growth performance, blood metabolites, relative weight of different organs, malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration in breast meat and egg yolks' cholesterol. This study was conducted as a completely randomize design with 288 unsexed Japanese quails randomly dividing into 4 treatments with 4 replicates of 18 birds each. As a result of this study, no significant differences were found for feed intake and feed conversion ratio (P>0.05), except the birds fed 30% walnut meal showed lower weight gain compared to the control at 7-21 days of age (P