Usa Chethanond, Sutha Wattanasit, Nongporn Towatana and Porntip Prommeung

pp. 611 - 622

Abstract

Beijing grass (Bj. grass: Murdannia loriformis) is widely used in patients and was found to have
pharmalogical effects as immunomodulator and anticancer. Thus, we aimed to demonstrate its effects in quail
as a model for poultry application. We evaluated the performances using Bj. grass in diets of laying quails
aged 7-12 weeks, namely, (1) egg performance, (2) egg quality, (3) humoral immunomodulation and (4) carcass characteristics.
The performances in laying quails were studied using 244 seven-week-old female quails which were
left from feeding diets containing Bj.grass during growing period and were maintained in the same treatments. The experiment used a completely randomized design and animals were divided into 5 treatments
consisting of 4 replications with 12-14 heads each. Quails were assigned to each dietary treatment as follows:
No Bj. grass and no vaccination (control) (T1), No Bj. grass and vaccination (T2), Bj. grass 3% and vaccination (T3), Bj. grass 6% and vaccination (T4), control diet and 10% Bj. grass juice (w/v) and vaccination (T5).
These birds were boostered with Newcastle disease vaccine at 7^th week after the first vaccination in the growing period. Approximately 25% of quails were bled for determination of packed cell volume, gamma globulin
levels and ND-HI titers. All quails were put to sleep at 15 weeks to carcass characteristics examined. We found
that Bj. grass could be used as high as 6% in the diet without abnormal clinical signs. It was noticed that 3%
Bj. grass tended to yield best performances among Bj. grass formulated groups (T3 and T4) and Bj. grass
juiced group (T5) but showed no differences from the control group. (P>0.05). There were no differences in
packed cell volume and gamma globulin level. ND-HI titers of Bj. grass 3% (T3) were higher than other
groups (2.33 ± 1.97 log₂) but did not reach protection level. For carcass characteristics, there was a doserelated reduction of abdominal fat. (P=0.000)

Keywords

• Beijing grass
• Beijing grass
• Japanese quail
• egg performance
• egg quality
• immunomodulation
• carcass characteristic