A Pioneer Study on a Non-invasive Method for in Ovo Chicken Egg Sexing.

Abstract Background: Day-old male chicks culling is one of the world most inhumane problems in the poultry industry. Every year, seven billions of male chicks are being killed in laying-hen hatcheries, due to their higher feed exchange rate, lower management compare to female ones and production costs. This work reports a novel non-invasive method for the gender identification of chicken eggs. Four electrodes were attached onto each egg during the incubation process for the data gathering period of fourteen days. Standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based chicken gender determination protocol was applied to the eggs on the last day of the incubation process to get the gender information. Result: A relationship between the collected data and the gender of the egg was built, and it was found to have a reliable connection, indicating that by measure the impedance data of the eggs from day 9 of incubation with the four electrodes setting and applying the self-normalization technique, we can determine the chicken egg gender.Conclusion: This is a pioneer founding, proving that impedance spectroscopy can be use to sexing of chicken eggs, before its life has been formed, relieving the poultry industry from such an ethical burden.