Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

They have found a way to tell the sex of a chick while it is in the shell.

https://www.producer.com/2018/12/new-me ... ts-market/

Thank you, that's very interesting.

Indeed, and interesting article. Makes one ponder, though, where it will go from there.

Cool! But it makes me wonder how much the cost of chicks and dog food will go up.

I am still sitting on that one, unless they can make the process highly automated and test very early in the embryo development stage, still boggles mind somewhat.

Interesting, I read another article on the same subject. They were using temperature to indicate the sex of the chicken. Lower temps during the first week of incubation enhanced the chances of having all females. I didn't believe it either.

The temperature thing actually selects for the one sex, so a lot of eggs don't hatch.....
Funny the testing thing, they've been able to do that since forever-just do a PCR reaction for the W chromosome...ZZ is male, ZW is female, so if the PCR is positive it's a girl....um. this more recent test would be faster, basically an elisa plate, but still boring a hole and sampling.