Gender determination in eggs

[Beth Curran]

Has anyone else been following this?

https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/more-exact--ethical-method-to-tell-the-sex-of-baby-chickens-/11931404

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51038472_Gender_determination_of_fertilized_unincubated_chicken_eggs_by_infrared_spectroscopic_imaging

[Mike Gilbert]

Interesting stuff.   Perhaps it will have economic value to hatcheries as they won't need to incubate as many eggs to get the numbers of females desired.   But I wonder what the cost will be for the equipment needed to test and handle large numbers of unincubated eggs.

[Beth Curran]

It seems geared mostly toward the hatching operations that supply commercial layers. Seems they cull all male chicks - I always thought they'd be grown out for meat, but compared to the cost of raising broilers, apparently it's more cost effective to destroy them. This technology has several benefits - the unwanted eggs could be used for feed (or, in the case of unincubated eggs, even human consumption), hatching half as many eggs to yield the same number of pullets would save money, and they avoid the both the cost and ethical concerns of killing and disposing of billions of male chicks annually (the description of which is a bit unsettling).

I suspect this technology will be cost-prohibitive to individual breeders, but the service of scanning eggs for a fee has potential in it's own right.