Impact of short periods of incubation during egg storage on hatchability and chick quality of long-term stored Japanese quail hatching eggs

Abstract

This research examined how applying Short Periods of Incubation During Egg Storage (SPIDES) influences the embryonic mortality, hatchability, and chick quality of Japanese quail eggs subjected to long-term storage. A total of 360 eggs collected from 26-week-old breeder quails were allocated into four experimental groups: T1 (stored for 21 days without SPIDES, incubated on day 22), T2 (stored for 3 days without SPIDES, incubated on day 4), T3 (stored for 21 days with two SPIDES treatments, incubated on day 22), and T4 (stored for 21 days with three SPIDES treatments, incubated on day 22). All eggs were kept under 17 °C and 75% relative humidity, while SPIDES-treated groups were intermittently warmed to 37.7 °C for 3 hours at 5-day intervals. The findings revealed significant treatment effects on parameters such as storage weight loss, moisture loss, hatchability (of both total and fertile eggs), chick quality, and embryonic mortality at early and mid-stages, as well as dead-in-shell rates. The T2 group achieved the highest hatchability and lowest embryonic mortality, whereas T3 and T4 also showed notable improvements in hatchability and chick quality compared with T1. Conversely, T1 exhibited a markedly (p