Avian Production Management

EGG QUALITY - CLEANLINESS AND VOLUME

Egg quality - Cleanliness

• This is essential for consumer satisfaction and also to improve and maintain the keeping quality.
• A dirty egg may harbour harmful microbes which will spoil the egg and render it unfit for consumption.
• Eggs collected from deep litter will be more dirty than caged eggs, obviously due to dirty wet litter and delayed collection of eggs.

Egg quality - Volume

• Volume is also one of the indicators of egg size.
• Egg volume is directly proportional to the egg size. Since the specific gravity of egg is more than one, the volume of a fresh egg will always be less than the egg weight. However a small egg will have greater volume by weight ratio.
• The egg volume of different species will be around 90-95% of their fresh egg weight. To measure the volume of the egg, fill a measuring cylinder of 500 ml/ 1 litre capacity with a known quantity of water.
• After noting the lower meniscus of the water, gently slant the measuring cylinder and slide the egg carefully into the measuring cylinder and note the final reading of the water, the difference in value will give the volume of egg in cm³.