THE PATTERN OF EGG LAYING IN DOMESTIC FOWLS KEPT IN WARM HUMID TROPICS

Oviposition times, sequence of laying, lag time, laying intensity, egg weights and specific gravity of two commercial hybrids, Hypeco Gold Line (HGL) and Shavers Black (SB), were studied with 192 individually caged birds (96 of each) over a forty six day period. The most frequent sequence size was three for HGL and two for SB, the longest egg sequence for HGL was 43 while that of SB was 22. The interval between successive eggs ranged from 23.00 to 27.67 hours for HGL and from 23.56 to 27.80 hours for SB. The laying intensity was 72.10 and 63.54 per cent for HGL and SB respectively. The mean egg weight was 62.83 ± 0.38 g for HGL and 68.81 ± 0.39 g for SB; the egg weight tended to decrease from the first to the last egg in a sequence. The mean specific gravity of the eggs were 1.057 ± 0.003 and 1.056 ± 0.005 for HGL and SB respectively. The peak of lay was between 0900 to 1000 hours in both crosses with 99 per cent of all eggs being laid between 0600 and 1800 hours. Over 70 per cent of the eggs were laid before 12 noon in both Cases.