Pre-hatch performance of Japanese quail egg weight categories incubated after several storage periods . [electronic resource]

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One thousand, two hundreds and sixty eggs of Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix Japonica) were set into the incubator maintaining 12 treatment groups in a factorial design experiment (3 x 4) including three categories of incubated quail weight eggs (lower than 11 g., light weight (L), 11-12 g., medium weight (M) and above 12 g., heavy (H)), and four egg storage periods (1, 4, 7 and 10 days). The traits studied were egg weight loss (%) during incubation, embryonic mortality percentage, incubation time, and fertility percentages. Results obtained revealed that, there was a significant (P<O.Ol) increase in egg weight loss (%) with increasing egg weight during incubation while, egg storage period was insignificantly affected on the same trait. Embryonic mortality percentage during the whole incubation period (1-17 days) was significantly (P< 0.05) affected by egg weight categories as it decreased by egg weight increase where the best result was obtained with heavy eggs (H) which recorded 22.01%. A significant (P< 0.01) effect on incubation time per hour due to quail egg weight was shown while, each of the egg storage periods and interaction effects were insignificant. A significant effect (P< 0.05) on fertility percentage due to quail egg weight, egg storage period (P< 0.01), while the interaction was insignificant. The best results were with medium (M) egg weight or storage period of 1 day while the highest values (95.83 and 95.12%) were obtained by interaction of 1 day storage period with each of medium (M) or Heavy (H) weights of incubated quail eggs, respectively. Conclusively, it can be concluded that, medium quail eggs and storage periods of 1 day or 4 days gave the best results of pre-hatch performance of Japanese quail under Egyptian conditions.

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