Vol. 12, Issue 1 (2023)

Author(s):
Dr. Dharmaraj GY, Dr. SB Prasanna, Dr. BH Rudresh, Dr. Kamalnath M and Dr. R Nagaraja

Abstract:
An experiment was conducted to know the preference of egg laying in mud pot vs nest box. Six hundred birds were reared under deep litter system. Three treatment groups namely T₁- Nest Box (NB), T₂ - Mud pots (MP) and T₃- combination of Nest Box and mud pot(NB+ MP) and each group consisting of 200 bids, provided 1:5 ratio nest box and reared separately in each groups. The results revealed that the highest average hen day egg production was showed in Nest Box (T₁) group (170.15) as against the lower average hen day egg production in T₂ (163.69). The average daily egg production between the T₂ and T₃ groups didn’t show much variation. There was a significant difference observed among the groups. Birds using Nest Box (T₁) showed higher percentage of laying eggs in the designated Nest Box (96.57%) as against the lowest percentage of egg laid in Mud Pot design (T₂) (61.90%). When observe the result of (T₃) group, showed the higher percentage of laying eggs in Nest Box (76.63%) as against in Mud Pot (18.22). Birds in the group of Mud Pot (T₂) showed higher percentage of floor egg (38.09%) as against to the Nest Box (3.43%) (T₁) and combination of Nest Box (5.14%) (T₃). However, there was a significant difference in the percentage of floor egg was observed in the group of Mud Pot (T₂) compared to the group T₂ and T₃. It was concluded that, the more number of egg production and less number of floor egg production may be due to provision of standard nest box during the rearing and more floor egg may be due to the non- availability of nest boxes.