Three hundred 49-days old Japanese female quails, averaging 138.0g, were used to estimate the requirement of digestible lysine level for Japanese quail in completely randomized block design with five replicates of ten females per experimental unit. The treatment consisted six levels of digestible lysine (0.80, 0.90, 1.00, 1.10, 1.20 and 1.30%) and the analyzed traits were rate of egg production (%), egg weight (g), egg mass (g of eggs/quail/day), feed intake (g), feed consumption: weight gain ratio (g of diet/g of eggs), final body weight (g) and shell percentage (%). No signicant effect of treatments on final body weight (g) was observed, but there was quadratic effect for egg production (%), egg mass (g of eggs/quail/day) and feed consumption: gain diet (g of diet/g of eggs) and linear effect on shell egg (%) and feed intake (g). The estimated requirements of digestible lysine for laying Japanese quail was 1.117% of the diet, corresponding to a daily intake of 254 mg of digestible lysine.
amino acid; Coturnix coturnix japonica; digestibility; eggs production; ideal protein; laying quail
