Effect of dietary fish oil supplement on nutrients digestibility and egg yolk omega-3 fatty acids contents in Japanese Quails

Abstract

This study were investigated the effects of dietary fish oil supplement on digestibility of nutrients, fatty acid composition of egg yolk and quality of eggs in Japanese quails. Three hundred and twenty, ten weeks old female Japanese quails were randomly divided into 2 treatments, replicated 8 cages with 20 birds per cage. Dietary treatments; control diet and fish oil supplement diet (added 6% fish oil) were fed for 30 days. Samples of diets, feces and egg were daily collected from last 5 days. For proximate analysis of fish oil supplement DM, EE and ash of feed intake were lower than control diet (P<0.01). Moreover, the dietary fish oil supplement on macronutrients digestibility revealed DM, ME (P<0.05) and ash were significantly decrease (P<0.01) and also found negative effect on nitrogen metabolism (P<0.05). Fish oil supplement had significantly negative effect on egg production, egg weight and yolk width (P<0.05). However, detected the increasing of saturated fatty acids, unsaturated fatty acids, omega 3 and omega 9 fatty acids contents of quails fed fish oil supplement diet (P<0.01). On the other hand, fish oil supplement diets were highly significant decrease in omega 6 fatty acids and omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acid ratio (P<0.01). In summary, dietary fish oil supplemented can caused positive effect on content of saturated fatty acids, unsaturated fatty acids, omega 3 and omega 9 fatty acids, but had adverse effect either macro-nutrients intake or their digestibility. Additionally dietary fish oil supplemented lead to lower omega 6 to omega 3 ratios that cloud be beneficial effect on human health.