ABSTRACT
This study was carried out to compare the allometric coefficients (b) that describe the cuts and organs’ growth of quails kept in different thermal environments. Three hundred meat quails were distributed in a completely randomized design with two treatments (climatized environment (CE) with 26°C of ambient temperature and environment without climatization (EWC, 32°C)) and six replicates of 25 birds. Allometric equations based on weekly fasting weight (WF) for the breast weight (BW), thigh (TW), drumstick (DW), wing (WW), heart (HW), liver (LW) gizzard (GW) and intestine (IW) were performed. To compare the "b" of the cuts and organs parallelism tests were carried out. There was no difference between the "b" in any cuts and organs of quails kept in CE or EWC environments. We observed that the BW and DW showed positive heterogonic growth (b>1), TW isogonic growth (b=1), and WW and organs negative heterogonic growth (b<1) in relation PJ. The "b" that describes the growth of cuts and organs of quails kept in CE or EWC environments are not affected. The breast and drumstick presented late growth, the wing and the organs early growth, and the thigh showed a proportional increase with the fasting weight.
Keywords:
allometry; environment; growth; modeling; temperature
