Response of Laying Quail to a Diet Enriched with Cocoa Pods Fermented by Pleurotus ostreatus.

Improving the quality of cocoa pods through fermentation with Pleurotus ostreatus reduced its crude fiber content, especially for lignin and cellulose. Fermentation of cocoa pods product increased their utilization in poultry diet. An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of feeding cocoa pods waste fermented by Pleurotus ostreatus on the laying performance and egg quality of quail. This experiment employed completely randomized design with five dietary treatments: 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% cocoa pods fermented by Pleurotus ostreatus in the diets and four replications. 200 laying quail (7 weeks of age) were randomly allocated into 5 treatments (10 birds per treatment) and 4 replications. Diets included iso nitrogen 20% and iso metabolism energy 2800 kcal/kg. The results of the experiment indicated that feed intake, hen-day egg production, egg weight, egg mass production, and feed conversion were not affected but egg cholesterol was affected by increasing cocoa pods fermented products in the diet. In this experiment, a diet which utilized 15% cocoa pods fermented using Pleurotus ostreatus maintained the laying performance of quail and reduced egg yolk cholesterol (20.30%).