Egg Innovations announced that they are “on track to adopt the technology in early 2025.” Approximately 300 million male chicks are ground up alive in the US each year (since only female chicks are valuable) and in-ovo sexing would prevent this.
UEP originally promised to eliminate male chick culling by 2020; needless to say, they didn’t keep that commitment. But better late than never!
Congrats to everyone working on this, including @Robert—Innovate Animal Ag, who founded an organization devoted to pushing this technology.[1]
Egg Innovations says they can’t disclose details about who they are working with for NDA reasons; if anyone has more information about who deserves credit for this, please comment!
For others who were curious about what time difference this makes: looks like sex identification is possible at 9 days after the egg is laid, vs 21 days for the egg to hatch (plus an additional ~2 days between fertilization and the laying of the egg.) Chicken embryonic development is really fast, with some stages measured in hours rather than days.
I asked Google when chicken embryos start to feel pain and this was the first result (i.e. I didn’t look hard and I didn’t anchor on a figure):
A recent study by the Technical University of Munich in Germany measured chicken embryos’ heart rate, brain activity, blood pressure and movements in response to potentially painful stimuli like heat and electricity and concluded that they didn’t seem to feel them until at least day 13. (14 Oct 2023)
Egg Innovations, which sells 300 million free-range and pasture-raised eggs a year
This interview with the CEO suggests that Egg Innovations are just in the laying (not broiler) business and that each hen produces ~400 eggs over her lifetime. So this will save ~750,000 chicks a year?
First in-ovo sexing in the US
Egg Innovations announced that they are “on track to adopt the technology in early 2025.” Approximately 300 million male chicks are ground up alive in the US each year (since only female chicks are valuable) and in-ovo sexing would prevent this.
UEP originally promised to eliminate male chick culling by 2020; needless to say, they didn’t keep that commitment. But better late than never!
Congrats to everyone working on this, including @Robert—Innovate Animal Ag, who founded an organization devoted to pushing this technology.[1]
Egg Innovations says they can’t disclose details about who they are working with for NDA reasons; if anyone has more information about who deserves credit for this, please comment!
For others who were curious about what time difference this makes: looks like sex identification is possible at 9 days after the egg is laid, vs 21 days for the egg to hatch (plus an additional ~2 days between fertilization and the laying of the egg.) Chicken embryonic development is really fast, with some stages measured in hours rather than days.
I asked Google when chicken embryos start to feel pain and this was the first result (i.e. I didn’t look hard and I didn’t anchor on a figure):
How many chicks per year will Egg Innovations’ change save? (The announcement link is blocked for me.)
This interview with the CEO suggests that Egg Innovations are just in the laying (not broiler) business and that each hen produces ~400 eggs over her lifetime. So this will save ~750,000 chicks a year?
I don’t think they say, unfortunately.
Wow this is wonderful news.