INCUBATION AND HATCHING PERFORMANCE OF OSTRICH EGGS DEPENDING ON THEIR STORAGE TIME
Lumturi Sena, Sabah Sena
Department of Animal Production, Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania
lumturisena@yahoo.com
The study was done in the ostrich farm in Patos – Albania. One egg setting was monitored, through dividing the eggs into three groups according to their age, as following: 20–30 days old, 10–20 days old and 1–10 days old. All the 197 eggs were marked according to their age of storage. During the hatching process, the respective parameters, such as: the total eggs set, fecundity, embryonic mortality, weight loss, were followed, recorded and monitored. Re¬lated to all these parameters, the appropriate incubation regime was selected. The average weight loss of all the eggs, no matter of their age, resulted to be 5.3%, or 0.5% more than the standard. The reason of the high embryonic mor¬tality (40.7%) relates mainly with the very long time and improper storage condition of the eggs before setting. While, on the other hand, the very high level of egg sterility (42.6%), relates with several factors, where the main two ones are the transport stress of the breeders, because they have just arrived from the Netherlands, the adoption stress and the temperatures stress in the new environment. The oldest eggs (20–30 days old) had the highest sterility level, which might have been embryonic mortalities as well (53%), but at this stage it is impossible to make the dif¬ference between an early embryonic loss and a sterile egg. The hatching rate (29.9%), compared to the total number of the set eggs is comparable with the same parameter realized in England (from 24.1 to 27.8% up to 34.9–50% ac¬cording to Deeming, 1995). From the results of this study it is concluded that: the shorter the egg storage time be¬fore the setting the better the hatching results will be.
Keywords: Ostrich; incubation parameters; egg weight loss; fertility; embryonic mortality
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