1. The development of the cooperative group farm playedanimportant role in the growth of the Japanese poultry industry and has a large influence in other agricultural sectors.
2. The Yoro and Ukino poultry cooperative group farms selected and considered in this study are typical cases.
3. The typical farming system in Japan had long been the system to produce rice and wheat with draft animals. But with agricultural mechanization, poultry raising: has expanded in order to obtain poultry manure which was once obtained as manure of the draft animal and to enable additional income to that from rice and wheat. Rural cooperatives have had an important role in introducing poultry business to their farms such as pullet growing business, culled hen processing and egg marketing, and technical backup was also given by the cooperative. In other words, the egg production expanded largely because of using the same type or variety of poultry breed, mixed feed, cages and management pattern, and there was increased production of rice and wheat due to the application of poultry manure.
However, since poultry farms had only small flocks and were too dispersed in the districts, it took too much time and transportation cost to carry the mixed feed, pullets and eggs produced. Moreover, the system had no effective measures against poultry disease and its expansion was restricted by the limited area of farm backyards in the clustered village. The Yoro and Ukino poultry cooperative are typical examples of the first stage of a poultry group farm.
4. The second stage of poultry group farm may be characterized as follows: Poultry farms are consolidated on the corner of the village field and just outside of the clustered village. It is a large poultry joint farm enterprise handling feed mixing, pullet growing, manure drying plant, chicken and egg processing plant and office.
This system to group farms for egg production not only has a greater number of layers, but lowers transportation costs for the mixed feed, chickens, pullets and eggs produced, because those plants are located in the same area of the cooperative farm, as compared to those in the first type of poultry group farm.
5. Under the over-egg production and production curb policy since recent five years, poultry group farm intended to have their own feed mixing plant in order to cut their feed cost and to market directly to retail store such as supermarket in order to save the egg marketing cost and to obtain higher egg prices.
It should be important that the poultry production and marketing system are reorganized efficiently in order to cut the costs.

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Experiments were performed to examine the effect of the long term disinfection by using a rotary spray system without removing the birds on the sanitary environment in the windowless floor-type poultry houses. Nine rotary spray systems (Fig. 1), each calibrated to deliver 10 liters of disinfectant per min., were installed on cross-beams (2.0m above the floor) with intervals of about 8m in each of two 10.0×73.7m floor-type houses: one served as a control and the other as an experimental. In each house, approximately 5, 000 birds were kept. In the experimental house, the rotary spray system was operated for 120sec. once daily at 1 P.M. throughout the period of 76 days from July 2 to September 15, and subsequently for 80sec. once at the same hour on the selected days (32 days in which the weather was fine) during the period until October 31. The disinfectant (PACOMA®, Eisai Co.) sprayed was 0.2% invert soap in water. The sanitary environment was evaluated by the number of falling bacteria counted by a routine technique and the quantity of airborne dust measured by a Dust Meter (Shibata Tvpe-P).
During a 24-h period prior to the experiments, the number of bacteria began to increase after light-on (5 A.M.) and reached a maximum at 9 A. M., and then gradually decreased until 3 P.M. when it again began to increase and reached a maximum at 6 P.M., and then decreased after light-off (7 P.M.) (Fig. 3). The weight of the airborne dust showed a similar diurnal change. These diurnal changes seemed to be related to the behavior such as eating, drinking, laying, sand bathing, copulation, sleeping etc. of the birds in the houses. The number of falling bacteria and the weight of the airborne dust were decreased by the spraying in the experimental house (Fig. 4). No appreciable difference in the moisture content of the manure was observed between the sprayed and not sprayed houses (Table 2). The long term disinfection by using the rotary spray system may serve for the improvement of the sanitary environment in the windowless floor-type poultry houses.

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Experiments were conducted to determine the feasibility of applying semen freezing and artificial insemination techniques to Onagadori breeding programs. It was possible to freeze the semen, store it in liquid nitrogen, inseminate Onagadori pullets IV with 125 million frozen-thawed spermatozoa each, and obtain fertile eggs and chicks. These results suggest that semen freezing and AI may be valuable tools for maintaining this historically and physiologically significant breed.

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SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoretograms of egg white of the chicken (White Leghorn, Rhode Island Red and Totenko-a Japanese native breed), quail, golden pheasant, silver pheasant, duck (Khaki Campbell, Pekin and Naki- a Japanese native breed), muscovy duck and pigeon were compared.
The egg white proteins were separated into 14 bands (Nos 1-14) in 10% gels. The mobility of the same protein bands in 10% gels were almost same among the species used except pigeon. The density of the band Nos 4, 5, 6, 9, and 14 was higher in Anseriformes species than in Galliformes species. In Columbiformes (pigeon), the bands Nos 1-6 were faint and Nos 7-12 were dense and the mobility of the bands was slower than those of Galliformes and Anseriformes species.
In Galliformes species, the density of lysozyme band (No. 2) was the highest in the silver pheasant, the second highest in the chicken, the third highest in the golden pheasant and faint in the quail. In Anseriformes species, the density of lysozyme (No. 2) and ovotransferrin (No. 12) of the muscovy duck was higher than those of the duck.

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[in Japanese]

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This experiment was to determine the effects of the feeding of three different types of organic or inorganic iodine additives on the contents of iodine and cholesterol in eggs and egg production in layers. The iodine content in yolk increased rapidly 4 days after the feeding of the additives. At 9-11 days later it reached to the maximal levels (19-23μg) which were about 60-70 times compared with those of the control group and were maintained during the feeding of the additives. When the feeding of the additives was suspended, the iodine content in yolk decreased sharply 5 days later and reached to almost the same levels as those of the control group 9 days later. The iodine content in albumen also increased gradually reaching to the maximal levels (0.6-1μg) 5 days after the feeding of the additives. It reached to the same levels as those of the control group 4 days after suspending the feeding of the additives. It is suggested that iodine fed additionally to layers is accumulated both in yolk and albumen, but the degree of the accumulation is much higher in yolk than albumen.
There was no difference in iodine accumulation in the eggs among three different types of iodine additives used. The content of cholesterol in yolk and laying performance was not affected by the feeding of the additives.

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The effects of cold acclimation on survival of thyroidectomized chicks in cold were studied. The outline of the experiments is shown in Fig. 1.
Survival time in cold (5°C) after the end of L-thyroxine (T₄) was shortest in the control chicks (group 1, survival time 6-10 days), followed by the 1-week acclimated chicks (group 2, 11-16 days) and longest in the 2-week acclimated chicks (group 3, 19-24 days).

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Chicken shell eggs were coated with di-aceto-mono-glyceride or liquid paraffin at about 24h after laying, and kept in a 25°C box for 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 weeks. Eggs coated with di-aceto-mono-glyceride resulted in much higher interior qualities (Haugh units, yolk index, weight loss, and incidence of eggs with collapsed yolk and rotten eggs) than uncoated eggs. Similar regressed equations between storage time and the egg quality such as Haugh units and yolk index were obtained with liquid paraffin coated and di-aceto-mono-glyceride coated eggs.

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