Indian Journal of Poultry Science

A study was undertaken to determine the relationship if any of duration of pre-incubation storage of hatching eggs with hatchability and subsequent performance. To achieve this, 100 fertile eggs of female broiler line maintained at OUAT, Poultry Complex were chosen at random each day and were stored for a period of 10 days. As a result of 1000 eggs with storage period varying from 1 to 10 days. The average maximum and minimum atmospheric temperature for the period was 38°C and 25.38°C respectively and egg storage room temperature was 34.2°C and 32.0°C respectively with corresponding relative humidity were 94.6% and 50.54%, 74% and 69.7% respectively. Results revealed 74% hatchability for the eggs with no storage. Hatchability was found to decline with increase in preincubation of storage period and nil when duration of storage period increased more than 5 days. The percent decline in hatchability for increase in each day of storage was 3.3 when data were analyzed using 0–4 days of storage and it was 10.37 when data of 5^th day of storage included in the analysis. Weekly gain in body weight of chicks increased gradually from 0 to 5 weeks and was maximum during 5 weeks uniformly in all groups. There were significant differences between treatment for shank length, keel length and breast angle. Egg quality traits differed significantly among treatment groups. The correlations between storage period and with each of shell thickness, shape index, shell surface area, albumen index, yolk index and breaking force were 0.847, 0.064, -0.058, -0.804, -0.948 and 0.054 respectively. From the above results it was concluded that not to store the hatching eggs at ambient room temperature prior to incubation during summer months for more than 4 days.