THE ROLE OF NUTRITIVE SOLUTIONS DURING EMBRYOGENESIS IN IMPROVING HATCHABILITY AND POST-HATCH GROWTH PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to testing the effects of spraying hatching eggs with some nutritive solutions i.e., vitamin C (Ascorbic acid, AA) and L-Carnitine (L-Car) on hatchability, embryonic mortalities, chick quality, some blood traits and post-hatch growth performance. A total number of 3600 hatching eggs were obtained from Cobb broiler breeder chickens at 35 wks of age. Eggs were randomly divided into 6 groups (600 eggs / group) with four replicates containing 150 for each. The eggs were sprayed during embryogenesis at 1st, 7th, 14th and 18th d of incubation. Eggs sprayed with AA and L-Car in: 1) no spraying without any supplementation (control group), 2) distilled water (sham group), 3) distilled water + 4 g/L AA., 4) distilled water + 6 g/L AA, 5) distilled water + 4 g/L L-Car, 6) distilled water + 6 g/L L-Car. At the end of hatching process, all un-hatched eggs were broken to estimate embryonic mortalities. Results revealed that spraying eggs with 6 g/L AA resulted in a significant (P≤0.05) improvement of hatchability traits. However, embryonic mortalities were almost significantly (P≤0.05) decreased due to application either AA or L-Car compared to control and sham groups. Furthermore, chick quality traits and subsequent growth performance markedly (P≤0.05) improved with application of nutritive solutions. Moreover, all blood traits were significantly (P≤0.05) affected due to positive effects of nutritive solutions, where the lowest corticosterone concentration observed for embryos resulted from eggs sprayed with either AA or L-Car, as judged by the decrease of stress. However, the highest RBC’s count recorded for chicks produced from eggs sprayed with 4 g/L AA, while, the highest value of hemoglobin concentration detected for chicks resulted from eggs sprayed with 6 g/L AA compared to other experimental groups. Furthermore, subsequent growth performance was severely improved due to spraying eggs with nutritive solutions. Most of carcass traits significantly (P≤0.05) affected due to spraying eggs with L-Car and AA, especially regarding with abdominal fat percentage, which significantly decreased. It could be concluded that, spraying hatching Cobb broiler breeder eggs with either AA or L-Car with doses 4 or 6 g/L on 1st, 7th, 14th and 18th d of embryogenesis markedly improved hatchability, chick quality traits and performance of progeny. Hence spraying eggs with these nutrients could be used as a successful method to reducing embryonic mortalities and improving early post-hatch performance.