The Impact of Different Levels of Vitamin E and Selenium on the Performance, Quality and the Hatchability of Eggs from Breeding Japanese Quails

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the impact of vitamin E and selenium (Se) supplementation on the performance, egg quality and hatchability of eggs from Japanese breeding quails. The experiment was conducted over a 60 day period using 135 quails in a completely randomized design (CRD) with two levels of vitamin E and two levels of selenium (80 mg/kg of vitamin E+0.2 mg/kg organic selenium and 160 mg/kg vitamin E+0.4 mg/kg organic selenium). For each treatment, 3 replicates were considered. Each replicate included 15 quails (12 females and 3 males). Experimental results indicated that feed intake, shell thickness, the weight of egg whites and the percentage of egg hatchability stored for 7 days were significantly affected by the treatments (P 0.05). However, it was found that the treatments of the study did not have significant impacts on other features, i.e. egg production percentage, feed conversion ratio, egg shell percentage, yolk weight percentage, international quality unit (IQU), Haugh unit, percentage egg hatchability in 10 days storage. The results of the experiments revealed that the use of vitamin E and selenium (160 mg/kg of vitamin E+0.4 mg/kg organic selenium) had the highest impact on performance traits, percentage hatchability and egg quality traits.