Role of chicken eggshell color in some egg physical characters and hatching output 1-Sinai eggs

Fares, Wesam; Rizk, Raouf; Ahmed, Mona; Boutrous, Nabile Galabe; Shahein, Elsayed; Wall, Dannica

doi:10.21608/epsj.2025.414379.1334

Role of chicken eggshell color in some egg physical characters and hatching output 1-Sinai eggs

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of poultry breeding, Animal Production Research Institute. A.R.C

² 1Department of Poultry Breeding, Animal Production Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center

³ Anim. Prod. Res. Inst., Agric. Res. Cent, Egypt

⁴ Department of Poultry Breeding, Animal Production Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center

⁵ Department of Poultry science, North Carolina state University (NCSU) USA.

10.21608/epsj.2025.414379.1334

Abstract

One thousand and two hundred hatching eggs produced from Sinai chickens aged 44 weeks were collected and visually divided into three groups based on eggshell color. The eggshell colors were brown (B), creamy (C) and white (W). Obtained results demonstrated that B eggs from Sinai chickens had the highest (p ≤ 0.05) egg weight, eggshell thickness, egg volume, egg surface area, and total pores number/egg compared to those for C or W colored eggshells. Brown colored eggshell was also found to have higher (p ≤ 0.05) protoporphyrin IX (PPX) pigment, ovotransferrin protein and iron in both of fresh and newly-hatched eggs compared to the C or W colored eggshells. Brown-colored eggshells had the highest hatchability percentage of fertile eggs (p≤ 0.05), while W colored eggshells had the lowest hatch percentage. Moreover, egg weight loss, hatch time and embryonic mortality percent were significantly (p≤ 0.05) lower in eggshells of B color compared to the W or C ones whereas chick weight at hatch was highest for B eggshell-colored eggs. Furthermore, there are positive significant phenotypic correlations between some studied parameters such as eggshell color and each of hatchability of fertile eggs, eggshell conductance, eggshell ovotransferrin, and eggshell PPIX pigment. The results of this experiment proved that brown as dark eggshell color represented better results of hatching success and hatched chick weight compared with those for lightest color ones in the same flock. This is possibly due to the role of color pigmentation on the building construction of eggshells. Using this observation could be promising tool in the breeding selection for flocks producing different eggshell colors.

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