Survival rates and mortality profile of indonesian local chicken embryos subjected to short period of incubation during egg storage

Abstract

Abstract The present study aimed to investigate the effect of egg storage duration and short period incubation during storage (SPIDES) on the survival ability and mortality profile of the local chicken embryo. A total of 532 freshly laid eggs collected from a local breeder chicken flock were selected, and stored according to the storage groups as 0, 7, and 14 days, respectively, at 18 °C and 55% RH before setting for incubation. An additional group of eggs i.e., SPIDES was stored for 14 days and subjected to the four-hour incubation condition (37.8 °C) on the seventh day of the storage period. Therefore, there were four storage groups as treatments and four independent incubation periods as replication, with uneven egg numbers based on the selection result during collection. Breakout analysis was conducted to evaluate the mortality profile of the clear eggs from candling activity on the 18 th day of incubation and from unhatched eggs at the end of the incubation period. The study revealed that the true fertility from all groups was quite similar; however, prolonged storage of the eggs up to 14 days decreased the survival ability of the chicken embryos. The mortality rate in the first week of incubation was significantly higher for the longer storage period. The number of live embryos showed a similar pattern for all storage groups for the second and third weeks of the incubation period. On the other hand, the embryos from the group of eggs subjected to the SPIDES were observed to have a number of embryos that survived until the hatching process as high as the embryos from the 0 or 7-days stored group. The study also showed that the effect of the prolonged storage period was characterized by the high number of embryos that died during the first 48 hours of incubation. This phenomenon was reflected in the high number of embryonic deaths in the state of the membrane phase for 14 days of stored eggs. It could be concluded that prolonged storage of the egg impaired the survival ability of the chicken embryos; however, this effect could be minimized by placing the egg for a short period of incubation during storage.

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