Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 31, 2026
High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: March 24, 2016
Effects of LED lighting during incubation on layer and broiler hatchability, chick quality, stress susceptibility and
Jesse C Huth1, Gregory S Archer2
1Department of Poultry Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.
Abstract:
Providing light during incubation has been shown to affect hatchability, but the use of LED lights has not been evaluated. This experiment evaluated the effects of LED lighting during embryogenesis on White Leghorn and commercial broiler eggs. To determine this, two experiments were conducted, the first using White Leghorn eggs (N=3456) and the second using commercial broiler eggs (N=3456) where eggs were incubated 12 h of light and 12 h of darkness (LED) or complete darkness (DARK); the light level was 250 lux. Hatchability, embryo mortality, and chick quality were measured in both studies, and a subset of one of the broiler egg trials were grown out to investigate fear and stress parameters. There was no effect (P>0.05) on hatchability of layer eggs; however, there was a difference (P=0.02) observed in chick quality, with the LED group having more chicks (75.34%) with no defects than the DARK group (56.53%). Broiler eggs exposed to LED light showed an increase in hatchability (90.12%, P=0.03) and an increase in no-defect chick percentage (86.12%, P=0.04) at hatch compared to the DARK chicks (85.76% and 69.43%, respectively). Differences were observed between treatments during the 14 d grow-out. The LED birds had lower (P<0.05) physical asymmetry (0.90±0.05 mm) and heterophil/lymphocyte ratios (0.279±0.021), indicating that they were less susceptible to stress than the DARK birds (1.16±0.07 mm and 0.347±0.021, respectively). There was no difference (P>0.05) observed between treatments in growth, FCR, or fear measures at 14 d. These results indicate that providing LED light during incubation can improve chick quality in both white layer and broiler eggs; however, it only appears to improve hatchability in broilers, which could be related to shell pigmentation. It was also demonstrated that providing LED light during incubation can reduce the stress susceptibility of broilers post-hatch. Utilizing light during incubation may be useful tool for the poultry industry.
Related Concept Videos
01:11Testing a Claim about Mean: Known Population SD
Estimating a population mean requires the samples to be distributed normally. The data should be collected from the randomly selected samples having no sampling bias. The sample size needed to be higher than 30, and most importantly, the population standard deviation should be already known.
In most realistic situations, the population standard deviation is often unknown, but in rare circumstances, when it...
02:27Background and Environment Affect Phenotype
An example of how genetic background affects phenotype can be seen in horses. The Extension gene in horses is responsible for their coat color. A wild-type gene (EE) produces black pigment in the coat, while a mutant gene (ee) produces red pigment. A...