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Background: Heat stress condition (34°C, Egyptian summer season) in pigeon leads to a lot of negative impacts on behavior, physiology, hepatic architecture, and biochemical parameter changes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of water bath as a managerial and low-quality diet (wheat) as well as some feed additives (propolis or black seed) as nutritional factors for improvement of these changes. Results: The result showed that heat stress condition induced a significant decrease in feeding behavior, feed intake, body gain, H\L ratio, and total antioxidants, while catalase, glucose, and cholesterol levels were significantly increased. These changes were accompanied by severe damage of the hepatic tissues that illustrated as swelling, vacuolation, collagenous tissue deposition, and venous congestion. Conclusions: The negative effect of heat stress condition was significantly declined by addition of water bath or feeding on black seed grains. Furthermore, feeding on the wheat grains only during summer season had economic impact as it did not show any more negative effects on the studied parameters. In conclusion, water bath and black seed have a protective role against the heat stress-mediated effects.

Genetic background of experimental animals contributes mainly to the variations in the experimental outcomes. Therefore, quails of two lines of plumage color (brown and recessive white) were studied to investigate the impact of plumage color mutations on the morphological structures of the oropharyngeal roof and also on the ingestive behavior and quail performance. Feeding intake and feed conversion ratio were higher in the brown quails, associated with nonsignificant increase of the live body weight and body weight gain. In the recessive white quails, ingestive behaviors revealed significant declines. The roof of the oropharynx roof was significantly longer in the recessive white quails; however, the upper beak was significantly longer and narrower in the brown ones. The length of the palate and pharynx showed nonsignificant increase in the recessive white quails. The median palatine ridge was formed of rostral continuous and caudal interrupted parts, and the lengths of these parts were slightly higher in the recessive white quails, meanwhile the lateral palatine ridge length showed a slight increase in the brown birds. Openings of intraepithelial glands were more numerous in the recessive white quails. The brown quails demonstrated more detectable and larger caudally directed conical shaped palatine and pharyngeal papillae, in addition to more considerable palatine salivary glands openings. The infundibular cleft was significantly wider in the recessive white quails, where its edges were characterized by lack of the pharyngeal papillae. The findings of this study will be beneficial for the breeders during selection the suitable quail lines for meat production purposes.

This study aimed to assessment the impact of supplementing pigeon squab’s diets with different feed additives on behavior, performance and some blood parameters during heat stress. One hundred and forty four, 4 wk-old age, unsexed pigeon squabs were used and divided in two groups. Thermonatural group squabs (TG) reared in 22 ºC, were fed basal diet, while heat-stress group reared in 34 ºC, and subdivided into 5 groups; heat-stress group was allotted to basal diet (HG) and four groups allotted to basal diet supplemented with different feed additives as natural feed additives (Moringaolifera(H1G) or fenugreek seeds (H2G)) and chemical feed additives (premix (H3G) or yeast(H4G)). Results showed that, Fenugreed seeds group (H2G) had more potent effect to alleviate the negative effects of heat stress on squab behaviors, performance,biochemical parameters and growth hormone, whereas the Moringaolifera, yeast and premix groups also have beneficial impactin alleviation the negative effect of heat stress, but less than Fenugreed seeds.In conclusion we could recommended the usage of 2 % Fenugreed seeds as feed additives to improve pigeon squab behavior, performance, welfare and biochemical parameters during heat stress condition.

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