Browsing by Author "A.O. Abdulraheem, J. O. Aremu, A. Mohammed, H. Allamin, M. M. Shettima, J. Aliyu, & A. O. Raji."

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    A. Genetic Relationship Between External and Internal Egg Quality Traits of Japanese Quails.
    (Nigerian Journal of Animal Science and Technology (NJAST), 2025-10-08) A.O. Abdulraheem, J. O. Aremu, A. Mohammed, H. Allamin, M. M. Shettima, J. Aliyu, & A. O. Raji.
    This work investigated genetic relationships between external and internal egg quality characteristic of Japanese quails reared at Livestock Teaching and Research Farm, Department of Animal Science, University of Maiduguri. Borno state. A total of 440 eggs produced by 110 quail hens, were used for egg quality traits analysis. Quails were grouped into young-laying (10 weeks old) and old-laying (20 weeks old). Variance and covariance components and genetic correlations were estimated using Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) procedures. The genetic correlations for egg quality traits of young- and old-laying were low to high (0.05 to 0.97, -0.01 to -0.74; 0.01 to 0.98, -0.02 to -0.83). The highest positive estimate (0.97) was recorded for yolk height and shell weight and least 0.05 between egg shape index and albumen length. Negative co-efficient was highest (-0.74) between albumen weight and shell ratio in young-laying group, indicating that shell ratio would have antagonistic effect on improvement of albumen weight. For old-laying quails, positive correlation was highest (0.98) for egg and albumen weight, implying that, heavy eggs would have large albumen. Highest negative correlation (-0.83) observed between shell and albumen ratio indicates that eggs with large albumen laid by old quail would possess delicate shell quality. Egg weight of young-laying group had positive correlations with all internal qualities except Haugh unit (-0.11) and albumen index (-0.40); and except Haugh unit (-0.09) and yolk index (-0.20) in old-laying. These findings suggest that egg weight can be used to improve internal egg qualities in laying quails.