Abstract
Background: Eggs are low-cost source of protein for balanced human diet due to the high contents of essential nutrients. On eggshells, various microbial groups exist that may affect egg quality, embryonic development, and human health, posing potential health, food safety, and economic concerns. The use of essential oils to decontaminate eggshells could be a effective strategy for eliminating pathogenic microbes. Thus, the current study was designed to investigate the efficacy of oregano and cumin essential oils in controlling microbial activity on eggshell and assessing their effects on fertile egg hatchability, embryonic growth, and chick development after hatching. Methods: Hatching eggs were divided into four groups; control groups, fumigation, treatment with Oregano oils 0.5% and treatment with Cumin oils 0.5%. The bacterial contaminants of eggshell were enumerated for each experimented groups. The effects of the hatching egg disinfection on growth parameters including fertile egg weight, egg weight loss percentage, macroscopic fertility and hatchability percentages were estimated. Results: Total bacterial counts were significantly reduced in all treated experiments compared with those of the control ones. Microcephaly and exencephaly were clearly observed in the embryos treated with formalin fumigation. All embryos treated with oils exhibited no observed malformation on brain and spinal cord.