Relationship between Hatchling Weight and Length on Body Weight Performance in Japanese Quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica)

This study was aimed to determine the effects of hatching weight and hatching length on the performance of body weight in Japanese quail. In this research, the live weights of quails up to 52 day of age were collected by taking into account of the gender of quails. Once quails were divided into the groups which were light and heavy groups and the long and short respectively based on the average hatching weight and length, the performance of live weight of groups was determined. The differences between the mean of hatchling weight groups was determined up to age of 31 and 17 on the female and male animals respectively depending on the selected groups (P < 0.05) but these differences were not observed at the later ages. In addition, the differences between the groups of hatchling length were statistically significant until the 17 days of age for quails at both gender, but the differences were not significant in the later period. The important effects of hatching weight and hatching length on live body weight up to the certain age were determined in this study. As a result, the observed effect was continued until the certain age period, depending on the aging and environmental factors but the importance of these effects were lost again at advancing ages of animals in selected groups.