The present study was conducted to determine EGG production TRAITS and EGG QUALITY characteristics in black and brown lines of Japanese quail. A total of 500 quails comprising 400 females and 100 males obtained from two breeding centers were raised according to the standard procedure for Japanese quail. They were grouped in according to their plumage colours. Age at first EGG-laying has been recorded. EGG production and hen day production (HDP) have also been calculated. Additionally, samples of 240 composite quail EGGs, 60 EGGs per line, have been randomly selected at the age of 88, 89, and 90 days. Those EGGs were used to determine the QUALITY of EGG including EGG weight, shell thickness, shell weight, shape index, air cavity, albumen index, yo lk index, Haugh unit (HU), and yolk color score. Furthermore, the data were analysed using general linear model (GLM) and Tukey’ s test was p erformed to evaluate the pairwise differences among quails. The results showed that EGG production TRAITS were not different among lines, except age at first EGG-laying (P < 0. 0001). Moreover, brown plumage lines have higher EGG weight, shell thickness, shell weight, shape index, yolk index, albumen index, HU, and yolk colour score than black plumage lines (P < 0. 0001), on the other hand, EGG air cavity of black plumage lines were higher than brown plumage lines, 1. 71 versus 0. 88 mm (P < 0. 0001). It can be c oncluded that brown plumage line has better both exterior and interior qualities of EGG than black plumage line. These findings may be useful to determine appropriate breeding program for laying quail in the future.

The present research was designed to examine the genetic analysis of EGG weight, EGG yolk weight and EGG albumen weight of Bovan Neva Black laying hens at 25, 51 and 72 weeks. For this purpose, thirty birds were selected from the layer flock in the Babcock University Teaching and Research Farm. They were in-dividually housed in separate labeled battery cage. A total of thirty EGGs were collected daily from the birds continuously in five days of EGG production, at each age of 25, 51 and 72 weeks. The total number of EGGs collected at each age were 150. Data collected for EGG weight, EGG yolk weight and EGG albumen weight were used to evaluate the descriptive statistics, influence of age and Pearson correlation coefficient on dif-ferent age groups. The mean values of the TRAITS revealed a consistent increase in EGG weight 55.02-63.29 g, EGG yolk weight 13.14-19.39 g and EGG albumen weight 35.52-39.21 g by aging. A significant positive ge-netic correlation was obtained among TRAITS with linear regression equations at different age groups. Re-stricted maximum likelihood (REML) of Wombat software was used to obtain the repeatability and herita-bility estimates. From the results, it was revealed that all the TRAITS recorded high estimates of heritability and repeatability while EGG weight is more heritable and repeatable than EGG yolk weight and EGG albumen weight indicating that fewer records would be required to adequately characterize the inherent production ability of each trait as laying age progressed.

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of antibiotic, organic acid, probiotic and prebiotic on QUALITY TRAITS of EGGs, EGG yolk lipids and blood metabolites of laying hens strain hy-line (W-36). The experiment was carried out as a completely randomized design from 32 to 42 weeks of age with 5 treatments, 4 replicates and 8 hens in each replicate. The experimental treatments consisted: 1- control, 2- basal diet+150 g/ton antibiotic (oxy tetracycline), 3- basal diet+3 kg/ton of organic acid supplementation (orgacid), 4- basal diet + 50 g/ton probiotic (Protexin) and 5- basal diet + 2 kg/ton prebiotic (Mannan oligosaccharide). The results showed that among the TRAITS of EGGs, EGG weight significantly increased by treatments receiving organic acid and prebiotic (P<0.05). EGG yolk cholesterol significantly decreased by diet containing probiotic (P<0.05). Blood glucose concentration was significantly increased by dietary organic acid (P<0.05). ALK enzyme activity in blood serum by use of probiotic significantly increased compared to treatment containing antibiotic (P<0.05). The results of this experiment showed that the use of dietary supplements, have beneficial effects on EGG characteristics and blood metabolites of laying hens.

A total of 37300 records of EGG weight (EW) and 1540 records of EGG QUALITY TRAITS, namely, albumen weight (AW), yolk weight (YW), EGG shell weight (ESW), EGG shell strength (ESS), EGG shell thickness (EST) and haugh unit (HU) of Mazandaran native hens were used to estimate genetic and phenotypic parameters. EGG weight data collected during 1991 to 2006 and EGG QUALITY TRAITS were measured in 3 consecutive days on 769 hens. Data were analyzed with restricted maximum likelihood procedure by using multiple-trait animal model. Estimates of heritabilities were 0. 471, 0. 747, 0. 334, 0. 595, 0. 218, 0. 465 and 0. 536 for EW, AW, YW, ESW, ESS, EST and HU, respectively. The genetic correlation between HU and AW was positive and low (0. 11), whereas it was negative and low with other EGG QUALITY TRAITS. The EW had a positive and high genetic correlation with AW (0. 95) and moderate with YW (0. 45) and EST (0. 39). The range of genetic correlations among all other TRAITS varied from 0. 04 (between AW and ESS) to 0. 81 (between EST and ESS). These estimates for phenotypic correlations ranged from-0. 13 (between YW and HU) to 0. 95 (between EW and YW). These results indicated that selection based on EW may increase YW, AW and EGG shell QUALITY.

BACKGROUND: Study of heritability, genetic and phenotypic correlations of internal EGG QUALITY TRAITS.OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate of heritability, genetic and phenotypic correlations of internal EGG QUALITY TRAITS in Azerbaijan native fowls.METHODS: Statistical models for all TRAITS were fitted using GLM procedure of SAS software. Fixed effects including generation and incubation time were significant (P < 0.01) for all TRAITS except for yolk hright. In the first section, eight univariate animal models were compared for estimation of heritability and other genetic parameters and the most appropriate model for each trait was determined based on deviance information criterion (DIC). The genetic and phenotypic correlations between certain TRAITS were also estimated through a multivariate animal model.RESULTS: Results showed that direct heritability estimations for EGG QUALITY TRAITS ranged from 0.12 for Haugh unit to 0.46 for yolk depth. There were high positive genetic and phenotypic correlations between albumen height and Haugh unit (0.96) as well as between EGG weight and albumen weight (0.87).CONCLUSIONS: EGG QUALITY TRAITS especially Haugh unit as a trait in the selection index, could be useful to improve internal EGG QUALITY in EGGs of Azerbaijan native fowls.

Published data on 4-week-long administration of exogenous thyroxine in broiler breeder hens to decline the cold-induced ascites in their progeny suggest that the long-term maternal hyperthyroidism would affect EGG QUALITY characteristics TRAITS in Cobb 500 broiler breeder hens. Seventy 47-w-old broiler breeder Cobb 500 hens (5 replicates and 7 hens each) were assigned in separate cages and allotted to two treatments, control and hyperthyroid. Thyroxine was orally administered to the hyperthyroid group (0. 3 mg hen/day) for a period of 100 days consecutively. Simultaneously, distilled water was orally administered to the control group. The blood sampling was done every two weeks to analyze T3, T4, and estrogen assays, using commercially kits and the EGG QUALITY attributes were evaluated for weeks 0, 3, 6, 9, and 12. Thyroxine treatment resulted in an increase in plasma concentration of T4; however, the T3 level and estrogen were not affected. The results of this study showed that the long-term administration of thyroxine had adverse effect on the most of EGG QUALITY TRAITS in broiler breeder hens; although the results may be distinct for treatments that using other birds, doses and duration of treatments, among the different EGG QUALITY TRAITS of broiler breeder hens evaluated in this research. Therefore, further studies should be done to make a final conclusion to use of long-term maternal hyperthyroidism treatment to reduce the ascites incidence.

The study was conducted to determine the effects of turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) EGG weight on certain EGG TRAITS and hatching performance. A total of 178 turkey EGGs comprising of three different EGG weight groups below 60 g (G I), 61 to 69 g (G II) and above 70 g (G III) were used for this study. Average EGG weight (g), EGG length (cm), EGG breadth (cm) and EGG volume (cm3) values increased with increasing EGG weight. There was a significant (P<0.01) difference in EGG TRAITS between EGG weight groups except shape index. Percentage of infertile EGGs and embryonic mortalities were decreased whereas percentage of dead in shell, total EGG hatchability, fertile EGG hatchability, fertility and poult hatched weight values were increased as weight of EGG increased. Results of higher hatching performance was obtained for EGGs that weighed above 71 g and were statistically significant (P<0.01) from EGGs that weighed between 60-69 g and below 60 g. It is concluded that turkey EGGs that weigh above 70 g would be suitable for setting to obtain better reproductive performance followed by medium sized turkey EGGs (6-69 g) and small sized turkey EGGs weighed below 60 g.

To evaluate effects of adding two probiotics (Thepax and Yeasturer) and two prebiotics (Fermacto and A-Max), and one synbiotic (Biomin) to iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous diet (ME=2720 kcal/kg and CP=145 g/kg) on performance of laying hens and EGG QUALITY TRAITS, 216 Lohmann LSL-Lite 76- wk old laying hens were divided in 36 cages (n=6). Productive performance of hens was recorded for six weeks and EGG QUALITY characteristics were measured on the last week of trial. Feed additives did not have significant effect on EP, FCR, FI and EM in the present study. Including diets with feed additives in the present experiment significantly increased EW. EGG shell weight and shell thickness were increased in the hens fed additive-included diets compared to hens fed the control diet. In conclusion, feed additives used in this investigation did have beneficial effects on EGG QUALITY characteristics in terms of EGG shell weight and shell thickness, with no beneficial effects on hens' productive performance.

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of fennel essence on performance, EGG QUALITY and ovarian morphology of commercial laying hens. In this experiment, one hundred and forty 30-wk-old Hy-Line (W36) layers were randomly assigned into 4 treatments including control (without fennel essence), 200, 400, and 600 ppm fennel essence with 5 replicates and 8 birds each. Performance parameters including EGG weight and EGG production were recorded daily and feed intake, feed conversion ratio and EGG QUALITY were measured weekly. At the end of experiment, 2 birds of each replicate were randomly selected and slaughtered for morphological assessments of ovaries. Addition of fennel essence has no significant effect on EGG production. Levels of 200 and 400 ppm of fennel essence showed a significant increase in EGG weight (P<0.05) and had no significant effect on feed intake and FCR, but it caused significant increase in yolk color and had significant effect on the properties of EGG shell (P<0.05). Also, there was no significant effect on the relative weight of the ovary, oviduct and stroma but 200 ppm of fennel essence had significant effect on weight of large yellow follicles (P<0.05). The results showed that the addition of fennel essence improved EGG weight, EGG shell and had significant effect on the large yellow follicles.