Relationship between fat in breast and thigh muscles and skin with abdominal fat from mated and unmated female Coturnix quail.
Coturnix quail chicks were hatched from randomly selected eggs and grown to adulthood. Forty-two mated and 13 unmated females were killed at 107 days of age. Correlations between abdominal fat and fat measured at different locations (breast, thigh, crop collar) were high. Percentage thigh fat was 1.3 times that of breast fat. There was no difference (P greater than .05) between mated and unmated female quail for percentage fat and moisture content of breast muscle and skin and percentage fat content of thigh muscle. A highly significant difference was found for percentage fat and percentage moisture content of wet thigh skin between mated and unmated birds. The phenotypic correlation between percentage moisture and fat content in the breast muscle was -.76 and was -.94 in the breast skin in both mated and unmated females. Coturnix quail may be used as a pilot animal in body composition research provided due caution is taken because of the difference between species.
D000005:Abdomen / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D000273:Adipose Tissue; D000818:Animals; D003370:Coturnix; D007866:Leg / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D008321:Mammary Glands, Animal / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D009132:Muscles / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D011784:Quail; D012867:Skin / Q000033:anatomy & histology*