THE EFFECT OF IN-OVO INJECTION OF BEE VENOM ON HATCHABILITY AND SOME IMMUNOLOGICAL PARAMETERS OF ALEXANDRIA CHICKS’ STRAIN AT HATCH

Abstract

Researchers are trying to boost the immune system of poultry birds through the use of natural immune-stimulants including bee venom. However, there is a scarcity in literature about the use of bee venom for in ovo injection studies. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of in ovo injection of two levels of freeze-dried bee venom (BV) (10 and 20 µg/egg) into eggs of Alexandria breeder hens at 18-day of incubation on the hatchability percentage, hatching weight per egg weight, and immune response of the young chickens. A total number of 900 fertile eggs at day 18 of incubation in three batches (300 eggs for each) were used in this study. Eggs were weighed and randomly allocated into three experimental groups as: control (C), low dose of BV and high dose of BV with 100 eggs each. Results showed that in ovo injection with10 µg/egg bee venom significantly increased hatchability percentage over the other treatments. The highest relative chick weight was observed with eggs of control group followed by lower and higher dose of BV groups. The increase of dose has reduction effect on the relative chick weight. The total protein and albumin values decrease significantly in 10 and 20 BV dose in-ovo groups compared to control group. In addition, results of showed that the spleen relative weight increased significantly in 20 BV dose in-ovo group compared to control group. Also, the same trend was observed with bursa relative weight. Whereas, the 10 BV dose in-ovo group has insignificant differences on spleen percentage and significant differences in bursa percentage compared to control group. We concluded that the in-ovo injection with 10 µg of bee venom/egg has good hatchability percentage with Alexandria breeder eggs, which may be suggested to apply.