Egg Quality Assessment within Day 0 to 10 as Affected by Storage Temperature

This experiment was conducted in the Animal Products and Processing laboratory, Department of Animal Production, University of Jos, Jos-North Local Government Area (LGA) of Plateau State. A total of 300 eggs from a battery cage and deep litter housing system were collected from the Poultry Division of National Veterinary Research Institute, Plateau State (NVRI) at once for this study. Eggs were obtained from Lohmann brown hens, at 44 weeks of age to evaluate egg quality characteristics. Out of the 300 eggs, (150 eggs from each housing system), 30 were picked at random after the following storage days (0, 5 and 10 days respectively) for determination of egg quality characteristics in a 2 x 2 Factorial arrangement in a Completely Randomized Design. The storage methods were room temperature (ambient) range from 26.6 - 29.40C and refrigeration at 5°C. External and internal quality characteristics of eggs were taken, which include egg length, egg width and weight. Data were analyzed using ANOVA at α0.05. Result showed that egg weight loss, yolk weight, diameter, ratio, yolk:albumen index, colour and albumen length were significantly higher at day 10 of storage with least values obtained at day 0. As the storage days increased, Yolk height, Index, pH, Albumen weight, Height, Ratio, Index and Haugh Units decreased with highest values obtained at day 0. There were no significant differences in the interaction effect of storage time and temperature on egg external quality obtained from battery cage and deep litter systems. Yolk height was greatly affected by storage days and temperature. As the storage days increased, there was a decrease in yolk height and index while an increase was obtained in yolk diameter. Refrigerator temperature had high impact on yolk height, index and diameter from egg in deep litter system while lower values were obtained in yolk height, index and diameter from egg in battery cage system. Albumen height, length, pH, index and Haugh unit was greatly affected by storage days and temperature. As the storage days increased, there was decrease in albumen height, pH, index and Haugh unit while an increase was obtained in albumen length. Refrigerator temperature had high impact on all the albumen quality parameters measured in this study. The results obtained in this study reveals that both the storage days and temperature had great influence on the egg quality. Eggs can be kept up to day 10 in both room and refrigerator temperature without any adverse effect on the egg quality.