Four proteic feeds chemical composition were evaluated, as well as the age effect in meat quails on the values of apparent metabolizable energy (AME) and the apparent corrected by the nitrogen balance (AMEn). The feeds tested were poultry by-product meal, feather meal, poultry by-product meal and feather meal and soybean meal, which have substituted 30% of the reference diet. It was utilized the total excrement collection, with 250 quails, males, in two different growth stages (20 to 25 and 35 to 40 days old). The experimental delineation utilized was the completely casual, in factorial scheme 4 x 2 (4 feeds x 2 periods) with 5 replicates per treatment, of 10 quails each one. Variation occurred referring to the chemical composition of the proteic feeds tested at this experiment, related to the cited values in the literature. The energy values found of apparent metabolizable energy and the apparent metabolizable energy corrected by the nitrogen balance in kcal/kg of feed were, respectively: poultry by-product meal: 2.609 and 2.329 at the first age, and 2.735 and 2.664 at the second age; feather meal: 2.551 and 2.401 at the first age, and 2.744 and 2.641 at the second age; poultry by-product meal and feather meal: 2.352 and 2.155 at the first age, and 2.500 and 2.434 at the second age; soybean meal: 2.248 and 2.046 at the first age, and 2.294 and 2.249 at the second age. It didn’t have influence of the age at the apparent metabolizable energy values, otherwise the age influenced the apparent metabolizable energy values corrected by the nitrogen balance of the analyzed feeds.
digestibility; metabolizable energy; proteic feed
