THE REALITIES ABOUT POULTRY The Modern Farm - The Realities About Poultry_Seco | Page 126

(i) Management factors: Effective and efficient management techniques are necessary to increase
the productivity of the birds and consequently increase income. This entails not only proper
housing and feeding, but also careful rearing and good treatment of the birds.
(j) Vaccination and disease control: Diseases have an effect on egg quality. Infectious bronchitis
and Newcastle disease, for example, will cause birds to lay eggs with poor quality shells and with
extremely poor quality albumen. Many of the birds continue to lay poor quality eggs even after
recovery. Effective vaccines should be administered.
(k) Collection of eggs: Frequent egg collection will prevent hens from brooding eggs or trying to
eat them and will also prevent the eggs from becoming damaged or dirty.
Maintaining Fresh Egg Quality
Maintaining fresh egg quality from producer to consumer is one of the major problems facing those
engaged in marketing eggs. Proper attention to production, distribution and point-of-sale phases are
of vital importance in maintaining egg quality.
Production Factors
The main production factors that affect quality maintenance are the following:
(a) Breed. The breed of the laying hen affects shell colour; for example, Leghorns produce white
eggs, while Rhode Island Reds produce brown eggs. The following egg quality factors are partly
inherited: shell texture and thickness, the incidence of blood spots and the upstanding quality
and relative amount of thick albumen. Though it may not always be possible, a consistent policy
of selection for breeds by egg producers can bring noticeable improvements to quality.
(b) Age. Birds typically begin producing eggs in their twentieth or twenty-first week and continue
for slightly over a year. This is the best laying period and eggs tend to increase in size until the
end of the egg production cycle. Birds lay fewer eggs as they near the moulting period. In the
second year of lay, eggs tend to be of lower quality.
(c) Feed. Egg quality and composition derive primarily from what a layer is fed. In terms of taste,
for example, eggs laid by hens fed on fishmeal will have a "fishy" taste. The type of feed will also
influence the shell of an egg and the colour of the yolk. Layers must be kept away from certain
plant foods if egg colour defects are to be avoided. These may include cottonseed meal and the
foliage of the sterculiaceae and malvaceae such as mallow weed.
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