THE EFFECT OF COATING HATCHING EGGS WITH CHITOSAN AND SPRAYING WITH ACETIC ACID ON THE PRODUCTIVE PERFORMANCE OF HATCHED CHICKS

This study was conducted to evaluate the coating of hatching eggs with chitosan and spraying with diluted acetic acid on the productive performance of hatched chicks from the mothers of Ross 308 broilers, and the study included two factors: two storage periods (4 days and 14 days) and egg packaging with chitosan before storage and spraying with acetic acid, as the coefficients T1 without addition, T2 spraying with acetic acid at 18 days of incubation, T3 packaging with chitosan before storage, T4 egg packaging at the age of 18 days of incubation and for two storage periods ( 4 and 14 days), each treatment included 60 eggs with four duplicates (15 eggs per duplicate), after hatching, the chicks were reared according to each treatment until the age of 35 days. The results showed that there were no significant differences of the experimental coefficients and their overlaps in the weekly body weight of the birds. While a significant superiority of the T3 treatment was found in the weight gain of birds within 35 days. A significant improvement of( P≤0.05) was found in the feed consumption rate and feed conversion coefficient of birds at a storage period of 4 compared to a storage period of 14 days. Also, a significant increase of (P≤0.05) was found in the food conversion coefficient in T2 and T4 compared to the rest of the experimental coefficients during 1-35 days of life. As for the growth rate , a moral superiority of (P≤0.05) was found in favor of the group of hatched chicks from stock eggs for 4 days compared to 14 days, and all transactions were morally superior (P≤0.05) compared to T4 at 18 days of storage, and T3 was morally superior (P≤0.05) at 14 days storage compared to the control group in the relative growth rate during 35 days, as for the economic indicator, the third transaction T3 was morally superior (P≤0.05) compared to the rest of the transactions