To assess the effects of dietary oil sources on productive and reproductive traits, sunflower oil, flax oil, corn oil, or fish oil were induced in quail diets. One hundred and sixty-eight 7-week-old Japanese quail were randomly assigned to 4 groups (12 males and 30 females each) with 3 replicates per group containing 4 males and 10 females each and fed for 13 weeks (including one week as an adaptation period) on a commercial diet supplemented with 3% of sunflower oil (T1), flax oil (T2), corn oil (T3), or fish oil (T4). The birds received water and were fed ad libitum during the study. The results of the experiment revealed that dietary supplementation with different sources of oil had no significant effect on male body weight, female body weight, or feed consumption of quails. Dietary fish oil at the inclusion level of 3% (T4) recorded the best results (p<0.05) in regard to egg weight, hen-day egg production, egg mass, cumulative egg production, feed conversion ratio, fertility, hatchability of eggs set, hatchability of fertile eggs, and embryonic livability, followed by the results of flax oil (T2), whereas the lowest values for these traits were recorded for corn oil (T3), followed by the results of sunflower oil (T1), which recorded the lowest means with relation to characteristics included in this study. However, there was no significant difference between T2 and T3 in respect to feed conversion ratio during the entire period of the experiment. In general, it can be recommended that the use of fish oil (T4) and flax oil (T2) at levels of 3% in the Japanese quail diet during the laying period lead to higher economic efficiency without adverse effects on productive and reproductive performance. Therefore, providing fish oil or flax oil to quail throughout their laying period may be a simple means to enhance the reproductive efficiency of these birds.
