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In commercial egg production, not just the number of eggs per hen housed is an important parameter. Egg quality is certainly as important.
Egg quality: Main characters to be treated throughout the text.
Characteristics
Heritabilities
Height of albumen
0,30 – 0,40
Yolk percentage
0,35 – 0,45
Blood and meat stains
0,05 – 0,10
Yolk color
0,05 – 0,10
Double yolk eggs
0,15 – 0,25
Table 1. Heritabilities of the main characters related to the internal quality of the egg.
ALBUMEN HEIGHT
The consistency of the albumen is, together with the height of the air chamber, one of the indicators of the freshness of the egg. The consistency of the albumen decreases inexorably over time after oviposition, due to an increase in pH, which leads to degradation of the binding of the proteins ovomucine and lysozyme, which make the albumen increasingly fluid.
The quality of albumen also decreases significantly with the age of the birds, as well as with the appearance of outbreaks of certain diseases such as infectious bronchitis or Newcastle disease.
Figure 1. Albumen height is measured with the gauge of a micrometer, at approximately 1 centimeter from the yolk
The albumen is becoming more and more fluid as time goes by. Larger eggs have a higher albumen height, so it is common practice to make a
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