The Effect of Temperature on Chicken Egg Quality Available at Grocery Stores
Keywords:
Temperature, egg albumen, geometric parameters, egg quality, haugh scoreAbstract
Abstract
Objective: The objective of this work was to assess the effect of temperature on different quality parameters of poultry eggs.
Methods: A total of 50 unfertilized eggs were purchased from poultry farm and grocery stores in winter and 50 in summer from the same farm and stores. Geometric parameters such as weight (W), length (L), and breadth (B) of individual eggs was measured. Formulae derived from geometry of ovoid were applied to measure volume (V), surface area (SA), shape index (SI) and geometric mean diameter (GMD) of eggs. The eggs were broken on flat surface. Albumen height (AH), albumen length (AL), albumen width (AW), yolk height (YH), diameter (YD) and pH of egg pulp were measured. Egg shell were dried and their weight was measured. Different formulae were applied to calculate pulp ratio, albumen index (AI), yolk index (YI) and haugh units (HU).
Results:
Independent sample t test was used to compare the geometric and internal egg quality parameters of summers and winter. There was insignificant difference in size, weight, and length of eggs, albumen height, yolk height, breadth, pulp ratio as well as pH of egg pulp (p>0.05).
The calculated parameters during summer e.g. SI, SA, V, and GMD were 77.22± 1.93, 73.03± 7.22, 59.05±8.6 and 4.82±0.25 respectively. The SI, SA, V and GMD during winter were 73.66±1.74, 70.02 ± 2.86, 55.09 ±3.36 and 4.70 ±0.10 respectively. There was no significant effect of seasonal variation on geometric parameters. Internal egg quality parameters like AI, YI and HU during winter were 5.02%±1.8, 61.57%±14.9 and 68.51± 11.50 respectively whereas during summer AI, YI, HU were 4.08%±2.09, 57.87%±10.17 and 67.91±17.35 respectively. The pH of egg pulp was 7.54 in winter and 7.73 in summer.
Conclusion: Geometric parameters showed insignificant differences in weight, and size but internal egg qualities were within normal range.
Keywords: Temperature, albumen, egg, geometric parameters, egg quality, haugh score