JOURNAL OF ANIMAL AND VETERINARY ADVANCES, cilt.9, sa.14, ss.1961-1966, 2010 (SCI-Expanded)
Growth is one of the well-known features in biological creatures. The evolution of body weight during growth is of particular importance in both breeding and management. In the present study, the adequacy of 11 mathematica l functions, (Gompertz, Richards, Logistic, Bertalanffy, Brody, Negative Exponential, Morgan-Mercer Flodin and three Hyperbolastic models) used to model growth characteristics of Japanese quails were compared. For this purpose, the live-weight data obtained weekly from 499 quails were fitted to aforementioned non-linear models. The results of the analysis indicated that the Gompertz model is the most appropriate one in terms of goodness of fit criteria (R(2) = 0.99998, R= 0.99997, MSE = 0.318, RM = 0.03019, RSD = 0.60868, AIC = -2.010, BIC = -2.172) followed by the Richards and H3 models. Weight and age at the inflection point for Gompertz equation were calculated as 81.70 g and 14.95th day, respectively.