Determination of DiazaCon in quail feed and quail serum by ion pair reversed-phase chromatography

Liquid chromatographic (LC) methods were developed for quantitating the pot ential avian contraceptive DiazaCon in quail feed and serum. DiazaCon was e xtracted from ground quail feed with basic n-butyl chloride. The n-butyl ch loride extract was evaporated to dryness. The DiazaCon residues were dissol ved in an aqueous methanolic ion pairing solution and quantitated by LC at 206 nm. Avian sera was combined with an equal volume of a pH 4 aqueous solu tion of ion pairing reagent and filtered to remove interfering proteins. Di azaCon was quantitated by LC. Mean recoveries for 500 and 2000 ppm fortifie d feed were 89.1 and 91.0%, respectively. The mean recovery for sera fortif ied at 5 levels ranging from 35 to 2000 ppm was 84.9%, Method limits of det ection were approximately 14 and 13 ppm for feed and sera, respectively.