Vol. 8, Issue 5, Part F (2023)

A biological experiment was carried out to investigate the effect of in ovo and early post-hatch feeding of early chick nutritional supplement (ECNS) on the hatchability and chick quality of broiler chicken. Five hundred and forty embrocated eggs were injected with 0.5 ml of normal saline, 10 per cent glucose, lysine, 0.5 per cent threonine, and 0.5 per cent β-hydroxy-β-methylbutarate (HMB) into amniotic fluid of 18 days old embryos. The hatched-out 288 broiler chicks were randomly allocated to six treatments of 48 chicks each. The steamed corn-soyabean and fish meal based early chick nutritional supplement (ECNS) was provided to broiler chicks immediately after hatch and continued till they were packed in the transport box. The data on hatchability, hatchling weight, egg/chick weight ratio, and transit weight loss of broiler chicks were recorded. In ovo feeding significantly (p<0.01) increased hatchability and hatchling weight (p<0.05). In ovo feeding combined with ECNS significantly (p<0.05) reduced transit weight loss in broiler chicks. Whereas early chick mortality was not significantly affected. Both in ovo and early post-hatch feeding has a solid beneficial effect in commercial broilers as it reduces transit weight loss and improves the chick quality of broilers without affecting the hatchability, it can be adopted under field conditions.