Comparative study of growth patterns in seven strains of Japanese quail using nonlinear regression modeling

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare the growth pattern of seven strains of Japanese quail including Wild, Italian Speckled, Tuxedo, Scarlett, English white, White button, and A&M Texas by nonlinear growth functions including Gompertz, Richards, logistic, Lopez, and Weibull functions. The body weights of the unselected randomly bred populations of these strains were measured weekly from 1 to 42 days of age and then used to fit functions. The fitness of each function was assessed by statistics including the mean square error, Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion, and adjusted coefficient of determination. The results showed that Gompertz was the best function for describing the growth curve in Italian Speckled and Wild strains; however, the best function for the other strains was the logistic function. The maximum and minimum values for age and weight at the inflection point were obtained for the White button and Scarlett strains, respectively. The weight to age ratio at the inflection point was maximized for Italian Speckled. The best growth rate was observed for the Italian Speckled strain, whereas the White button strain exhibited the worst growth rate. In conclusion, the Italian Speckled strain had the best properties among the tested strains for breeding as broiler poultry. Research ArticleThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 442FARAJI-AROUGH et al. / Turk J Vet Anim Sci specific fixed marker genes for plumage color, eggshell color, and brooding groups making similar colonies. It is supposed that these marker genes do not affect the growth pattern in poultry (12), whereas the effect of the roux plumage color mutation on growth was reported by Minvielle et al. (16). The results of several studies showed that selection of the growth function must be strainspecific (12,20). The present study was undertaken to compare growth patterns of quail strains using nonlinear functions. Materials and methodsThe experiment was performed in the Research Center of Special Domestic Animals (RCSDA), Research Institute at University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran. A total of 470 one-day-old Japanese quails including Wild (n = 83), Italian Speckled (n = 136), Scarlett (n = 41), Tuxedo (n = 44), White button (n = 31), English white (n = 64), and A&M Texas (n = 71) strains were obtained from the genetic stock of the RCSDA hatchery from unselected and randomly mating parents. On hatching day, all chicks were identified by wing bands, and they were fed a normal diet containing 250 g CP/kg and 2900 kcal J ME/kg. The birds had ad libitum access to feed and water throughout the experiment. A lighting schedule of 23:1 h (light:dark) was used during the experiment. Room temperature was scheduled to drop gradually from 35 °C the first week to 20-25 °C for the following weeks. Body weights of the birds were recorded weekly. The records for quails that died before 42 days of age were excluded from the analyses.Five nonlinear functions including the Gompertz, Richards, logistic, ...

Genetic and physiological variation in two strains of Japanese quail

“…Japanese quail ( Coturnix coturnix japonica ) is currently the smallest poultry species reared primarily for meat and egg production [ 1 ]. It has unique characteristics, including rapid growth, quick life cycle, disease resistance, early sexual maturity, high rate of lay, and lower feed consumption [ 2 , 3 ].…”

A Growth Performance and Nonlinear Growth Curve Functions of Large- and Normal-Sized Japanese Quail (<i>Coturnix japonica</i>)

“…Our results demonstrated that the Gompertz model presented the best fit for NS and F1 (LS ♀ × NS ♂) birds among all the five models examined. Faraji-Arough et al (2018) and Santos et al (2018) have previously reported that the Gompertz model is the most suited for plotting Japanese quail growth curves. However, the Richards model includes more parameters and possesses greater flexibility than the other growth models (Yin et al, 2003), and presented the best fit for LS and F1 (NS ♀ × LS ♂) quails in the present study.…”

“…Several previous studies have focused on the growth rate of Japanese quail (Telekan et al, 2017;Faraji-Arough et al, 2018); however, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have compared the growth curves of the reciprocal F1 generation with those of their parents, which differ genetically in terms of the trait of interest. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the differences between the growth patterns of LS and NS quails, by fitting the growth metrics of these two quail strains and their reciprocal F1 progeny to five different nonlinear regression growth models (Weibull, Logistic, Gompertz, Richards, and Brody).…”

Prediction and optimization of slaughter weight in meat-type quails using artificial neural network modeling

“…This may be due to the S-shaped pattern of the growth curve in this bird. In fact, the growth rate of the birds at early stages is very slow, and after 15–20 D of age, the growth rate accelerates to the inflection point ( Hyankova et al., 2001 , Faraji-Arough et al., 2018 ). Selection for body weight at week 4 (28 D) was recommended in the study of Barbieri et al.…”