IPB Researchers Give Ice Water to Quail Livestock to Prevent Stress
The research team from the Department of Production and Animal Technology, Faculty of Animal Science, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) which consists of Prof. Dr. Ir. Iman Rahayu HS, MS, Prof. Ir Sumiati, M.Sc, Andoni Reza Nugroho, and Jonatan Senja did a research experiment to see the effects of feeding low temperatured water to quails towards their levels of stress. The indicators of the research are the levels of productivity, quality of the eggs, and the blood profiles of the quails.
“The need for animal protein will keep increasing by time. One of the kinds of livestock which has the potential to contributing as a source of protein are quails. Besides their meat, quail eggs can also be consumed and their productivity rate is also quite high,” says Prof. Iman Rahayu
Quails can lay as many as 200-300 eggs per year. Their optimum egg production is effected by three main factors, which are breeding, feeding, and managment.
Prof. Iman says that Indonesia is a tropical country with a high enviromental temperature (around 27.2°C with the temperature variation around 19.9-35.7 °C) and the humidity around 50%-91%. Meanwhile, quails need a temperature around 21-24 °C to be able to reach maximum reproduction. Therefore, quails in Indonesia are easily stressed due to the hot and humid weather and can effect their productivity.
“Due to the fact that quails consume large quantitites of water in high tempreatures, we tried to experiment weather there would be a significant effect to the quails if we gave them cold water or low temperature water as an alternative to prevent stress towards the quails which are an effect from the hot weather,” says Prof. Iman Rahayu.
The results of the experiment show that giving an additional amount of ice as much as 75% of the quails drinking water volume (which would be around 4°C) had a positiive effect towards the weight of the egg and the egg white percentage that was produced. Giving ice as much as 50% (8°C) and 75% of the drinking water volume was able to lower the stress caused by the hot weather. Besides that, the quails that were given ice water became more tolerant towards high temperatured environments (AVR)
