Can in ovo Vitamin D3 injection help improve hatch & chick performance?
Hello everyone! Welcome to our Research Digest #15.
As I'm writing this post, the Bay area (where I'm living) placed strictest order "shelter in place" in the area. Starting from tomorrow, my 3-year old's preschool will be closed, and we will all have to stay at home (except for essential reasons like seeking health care) until April 7th.
So this is my last "free" afternoon for a while...Still haven't figured out how my husband and I will be able to work at home, I bet it will look like this whenever we try to have a conference call...
In fact, our family had gone back to China in January, right before everything started, thinking that it would nice to have our daughter experiencing her first Chinese New Year over there. But in a matter of days, things changed dramatically and we had to cut the trip short and got back home early. Yet now, the exact scenarios are happening here in the U.S. It is truly interesting to experience it twice...Let's keep our spirit up and hope the pre-cautionary steps we take will help prevent the virus from spreading further.
With just a few "kid-free" hours left for a while, I decided to use this time to post this Research Digest --- no promise as to when the next post would be possible...😅
The paper that I wanted to share with you today was just published on the Poultry Science on the March issue, and is titled "The effects of in ovo injected vitamin D3 sources on the eggshell temperature and early posthatch performance of Ross 708 broilers".
This was a collaborative work from Dr. Edgar Peebles' lab at Mississippi State with University of Alberta and Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The study was conducted at Mississippi state.
Background
The application of in ovo injection to deliver nutrients in the hatchery has been an interest in recent years. Vitamin D3 is an essential nutrient that's involved in a lot of biological and metabolic processes, and therefore may help with hatching and embryonic development. The form 25OHD3 is believed to be a more effective form of D3 delivery.
So, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of in ovo inject of D3 vs. 25OHD3 on hatch performance and chick performance.
What was done?
The experiment design is shown below.
In ovo injection was performed using an Inovoject M from Zoetis.
What was found?
- Eggshell Temperature was not different between treatments - only affected by hours of incubation
- Hatching performance was not affected, except for Late embryo mortality, which was significantly lower in 25OHD3-injected eggs.
- Interestingly, chick performance in the first 14 days after hatch was affected by in ovo treatments - where chicks from 25OHD3-injected eggs had the lower feed intake and FCR. The authors thought that this improvement might be partially due to 1). possible increased satellite cell activity & size, and therefore increased intestinal villus length --> better nutrient absorption; 2). 25OHD3 can be more efficiently stored in target tissues, such as liver (while D3 is mainly stored in adipose tissue).
Take-home message
In ovo injection of both D3 and 25OHD3 at day 18 did not affect eggshell temperature; 25OHD3 injection improved late embryo livability & post-hatch chick performance (by lowering FCR) on day 14. Â
Full article access👇
Reference
Fatemi, S.A., Elliott, K.E.C., Bello, A., Durojaye, O.A., Zhang, H.J. and Peebles, E.D., 2020. The effects of in ovo injected vitamin D3 sources on the eggshell temperature and early posthatch performance of Ross 708 broilers. Poultry Science, 99(3), pp.1357-1362.
Disclaimer: The blog has no affiliation, sponsorship, or partnership with any products or companies mentioned in this post.