The objective ofthis work was to evaluate the effects of sodium levels in the diet for the growingphase on the performance of Japanese quails during the the growth and productionphases. It was used 480 quails at 1 day of age distributed in a completely randomizeddesign with six diets containing 0.07; 0.12; 0.17; 0.22; 0.27 and 0.32% of sodium,evaluated with eight repetitions of ten birds per experimental unit. In thephase from 1 to 21 days of age, level of sodium had a linear effect on feedand water intake and a quadratic effect on weight gain and feed conversion whosebest values were obtained with the levels of 0.23% and 0.21% of sodium, respectively.However, from 21 to 42 days of age, the increase in the level of sodium didnot affect feed intake but it promoted a linear reduction of weight gain, increaseon water consumption and a worse in feed conversion. In the complete period(1 to 42 days of age), the increase of sodium levels in the diet linearly increasedwater consumption and moisture of excreta and quadratically affected digestibilityof dry matter (DM), nitrogen and gross energy (GE) and the values of apparentmetabolizable energy (AME) and apparent corrected energy (AMEn). Optimum levelsof 0.20% and 0.27% were calculated for coefficients of DM and nitrogen digestibilitiesand 0.19% for coefficients of digestibility of gross energy, AME and AMEn. Ingeneral, the performance of quails during the laying period is not influencedby the sodium levels received in the growing phase. Feeds for Japanese quailsat 1 to 42 days of age should be formulated with sodium levels between 0.12%and 0.23%.
