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Despite all the handling to which our breeding hens are exposed, a percentage of the eggs will be laid on the floor of the houses.
The collection of these floor eggs is costly for the poultry farmer (Photo 1). Because they are usually dirtier, they contain more bacteria in their shells (Berrang et al., 1997) and more cracks, compared to eggs laid in nests (De Reu, 2006).
A large percentage of these cracks are the gateway for bacteria to enter the egg, resulting in lower hatchability, lower quality chicks and increased mortality in the first days on the farm (Khabisi et al., 2012).
It is commonly believed that eggs laid on the floor, if they look clean, present no problem to the hatchery.
However, Tuellett 1990; Van den Brand et al., (2016) and Meijerhof et al., (2022) reported in their studies that floor eggs even if they look clean or have been washed have a higher degree of contamination and generate a lower hatch than nest eggs.
This percentage of minor birth is between 10% to 20%, depending on the type of bed and its condition, and can be a not insignificant figure.
Photo 1. Collection of floor eggs is costly for the poultry farmer.
The cause of such minor hatching is largely attributed to embryo death by contamination of the yolk sac, primordial around day 18 of embryonic development (Deeming et al. 2002), as some birds are unable to free themselves from the shell (Moosanezhad Khabisi et al. 2012).
It should be noted that some studies report mortality at all ages of embryonic development as can be seen in Table 1 adapted from Van den Brand et al (2016).
Table 1. Mortality at all ages of embryonic development.
In addition to embryonic mortality, it is well known that in hatcheries where there are floor eggs, the number of eggs that explode increases, which generates a high bacterial load inside the machines with all the deleterious effect that this can have (Photo 2 and 3).
Chicks hatched from floor eggs, washed or not, are of lower weight when they leave the hatchers, largely due to the fact that the cracks in the shell that usually occur in this type of eggs generate a greater loss of moisture during incubation or to changes in conductance (Burton and Tullett, 1983) that cause the birds to hatch earlier than programmed and have to wait inside the hatchers suffering from dehydration.
Chicks from floor eggs have been reported to be of lower q...
