Quality of eggs of lay hens stored at different temperature and storage conditions

Abstract

The aim of this work was to determine the effect of conservation temperature and storage period in the internal quality of eggs from semi-heavy laying hens with different ages. There were utilized 1200 eggs from commercial laying hens Hisex Brown with 26 and 55 weeks. The samples were analyzed in fresh eggs and four, eight, 12 e 16 days of storage and different conservation systems (natural environment and refrigerated). For each age adopted in a completely randomized design, it was followed a factorial scheme 2 x 5 (temperature of conservation and storage period). The variables analyzed were: egg weight, pH of the albume and of the yolk, haugh unit, yolk index, albume, yolk, and shell percentage and total solids percentage (dry matter) of the albume and yolk. Data were submitted to the analysis of variance and the degree of freedom concerning to storage period were decomposed in orthogonal polynomials by computational program Statistical Analysis System (SAS). There were treatment effects to the most of studied variables, independent of the bird ages, except to the egg weight from oldest hens and total solids percentage of the albume and yolk of the eggs from young layers. It was concluded that the increase in the storage period affects the internal quality of eggs from semi-heavy laying hens, young or old one, independent of the conservation system used. However, the effect is minimized when eggs are refrigerated.