Did you happen to find out if any egg producers did in ovo sexing, or if they were close to adopting it? If Fifth Crown Farm raised all their own hens from hatchlings, what do they do with the male chicks? I‘m a lot less opposed to macerators than the typical person (who is opposed to them), but traditional chick culling alone is enough to dissuade me from egg consumption, independent of direct effects on hens. When I’d last looked into it for the S Bay I couldn’t find any place that did it (and all the producers using it were from outside the US).
On a related note, did you happen to turn up anything on what the hens were fed? I vaguely remember seeing something about fancier places feeding their hens grubs or insect meal, which is a whole separate can of worms.
More broadly, does anyone know of any chick suppliers who perform in ovo sexing? I’ve been tempted to raise some egg-laying hens as pets with more tightly regulated welfare standards, but have been limited by space and time constraints (Bay Area, amirite). Would be nice to reintroduce eggs into my diet after a decade+ without! When I was a lad I ate one, sometimes two dozen eggs every evening to help me bulk, but now that I’m grown I’ve abstained from all but the most incidental egg consumption.
Unfortunately, I think that there are no US farms yet that use in-ovo sexing (though I’d love to hear about it if I’m wrong about that!) I know it’s been implemented in Germany and I think is being adopted more widely in Europe, but I don’t think the US has followed suit yet. Even the Animal Welfare Approved certification doesn’t have any requirements about what do with male chicks, it simply states that they can be “removed” from the AWA system (meaning, I think, transferred off-farm and then no certification-related requirements apply to them anymore, so they’re probably just macerated as usual. :( )
Re: hen feed and insects, I think that the “natural forage” that these farms refers to means that chickens forage for bugs in the ground. I’m not sure to what extent these are wild insects vs grubs raised for chicken feed, but either way, if you’re worried about insect suffering, it seems possible that pasture-raised foraging chickens contribute more to that than a corn-fed chicken would (though given the pesticides used to grow the corn, I’m not actually sure).
Thank you for looking into this!
Did you happen to find out if any egg producers did in ovo sexing, or if they were close to adopting it? If Fifth Crown Farm raised all their own hens from hatchlings, what do they do with the male chicks? I‘m a lot less opposed to macerators than the typical person (who is opposed to them), but traditional chick culling alone is enough to dissuade me from egg consumption, independent of direct effects on hens. When I’d last looked into it for the S Bay I couldn’t find any place that did it (and all the producers using it were from outside the US).
On a related note, did you happen to turn up anything on what the hens were fed? I vaguely remember seeing something about fancier places feeding their hens grubs or insect meal, which is a whole separate can of worms.
More broadly, does anyone know of any chick suppliers who perform in ovo sexing? I’ve been tempted to raise some egg-laying hens as pets with more tightly regulated welfare standards, but have been limited by space and time constraints (Bay Area, amirite). Would be nice to reintroduce eggs into my diet after a decade+ without! When I was a lad I ate one, sometimes two dozen eggs every evening to help me bulk, but now that I’m grown I’ve abstained from all but the most incidental egg consumption.
Unfortunately, I think that there are no US farms yet that use in-ovo sexing (though I’d love to hear about it if I’m wrong about that!) I know it’s been implemented in Germany and I think is being adopted more widely in Europe, but I don’t think the US has followed suit yet. Even the Animal Welfare Approved certification doesn’t have any requirements about what do with male chicks, it simply states that they can be “removed” from the AWA system (meaning, I think, transferred off-farm and then no certification-related requirements apply to them anymore, so they’re probably just macerated as usual. :( )
Re: hen feed and insects, I think that the “natural forage” that these farms refers to means that chickens forage for bugs in the ground. I’m not sure to what extent these are wild insects vs grubs raised for chicken feed, but either way, if you’re worried about insect suffering, it seems possible that pasture-raised foraging chickens contribute more to that than a corn-fed chicken would (though given the pesticides used to grow the corn, I’m not actually sure).