Al-Ghariri M. H. M., Aldhanki Z. T. M.
The current experiment was carried out at Animal Production Department field (College of Agricultural and Engineering Sciences, University of Baghdad, Abu-Gharieb), the end target of this experiment was to pass the crucial period of newly hatched chicks during last period of incubation till the end of first week of age via combined them, so, a prototype cardboard box was designed and manufactured locally, consist of two parts, the outer cover, and the bottom part. Every 4 cardboard boxes were put together to consist a set of combined on farm hatching process with spot brooding via shredded the outer cover of cardboard box to form a circle spot brooder with 4 cardboard box bottom in it, 1800 fertile hatching eggs were used after candling at 18 ED (Embryonic Day), 600 fertile eggs were exposed to on farm hatching procedure to represent first treatment, distributed into three pens with cardboard boxes set without food wrapping film coat, and 600 fertile eggs used in second treatment via placing them into cardboard boxes set coated with food wrapping film, the third treatment consisted of 600 fertile eggs stated in conventional hatchery baskets till end of incubation. The results showed that were insignificant differences between treatments in the percentage of hatchability of fertile eggs, while significant differences between treatments were happened in late embryonic and live pipped embryo percentages. The same insignificant differences were noticed in external and internal chick's qualities, except the significant increase in relative weight of bursa. The previous results revealed that using cardboard boxes set without covering it could be a useful way to replace hatcher cabinet without any significant differences between two hatching systems, and that would be rising the incubation capacity utilization to 17 times per year instead of 13 to 14 times, leading to add values to increasing the number of batches hatch during the year.