The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
psmag.com
psmag.com
It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
Maceration is quicker than CO2 asphyxiation. Animals (including humans) can detect high levels of CO2 but most (rodents are an exception) can't detect low levels of oxygen.
I found these articles:
https://www.upc-online.org/slaughter/report.html (scroll down to Gas Stunning).
https://www.hsa.org.uk/downloads/technical-notes/TN12-gas-ki...
Both recommend inert gas asphyxiation but in the context of adult birds.
Scientists are looking into in ovo sexing: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00216-016-0116-6
I think it's kind of like teaching someone how to ride a bike. No amount of theory and coaching will help until the connections form in their brain.
Smarter everyday has an interesting video[1] on this phenomenon where he showed that it takes considerable effort to learn to ride a "backward" bike and once you do, you will forget how to ride a normal one and need to relearn it.
That statement belongs in a dystopian sci-fi novel.
> How do you respond to allegations that factory farming is "torture" or "cruel" or "like a terrifying movie about some strange dystopian society, but in this monster story, the horrifying monsters are us"?
> Relax, Tommy, everything we do is completely legal and FDA-approved, so, therefore, it is fine.
> I have no follow-up questions
On the upside, there's research on in-egg sexing.
http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2016/06/13/us-egg-producer...
Females are also more docile and less likely to cause damage to other chickens.
Part of that is that the animal only has so much energy to spend, the other is that when breeding for one trait, one invariably tends to neglect other traits.
I can't imagine the sort of callous nature one has to foment within themselves to so dismissively handle a living creature then toss it into a machine that will instantly end its life in seconds, for no better reason than being born the wrong sex.
I can accept killing as part of the food cycle, but this cold method of one person stamping out hundreds of lives per hour for no real productive gain had me reeling.
Hmm? I grew up around farms. You do realize roosters (male chickens) are not very productive right?
I think these practices are horrible, but I understand that the only reason they happen is due to the productive gain. Even on traditional farms roosters are culled earlier than later, as you only need a handful at most per 100 chickens.
The type of operation you describe is typically for laying hens. Roosters of those breeds are not useful.
The flipside to their early death is the fate of the hens, which may have to live in small cages for a couple of month before being slaughtered themselves.
So, yes, I can absolutely watch those videos without a shred of emotion. It's called compartmentalization.
However, it's not just that I feel bad about animals being killed or tortured. Factory farming is also simply disgusting and I don't want to eat the food it produces.
Compartmentalize.
I also don't think the fact that chickens are dumb makes it less insane and cruel to produce, torture and kill them on a massive scale.
If it were, how about pigs? They get a really shitty deal during production in animal farm as well. They are supposedly quite smart, definitely concious and able to feel pain and suffering.
The happiest moment of their lives is probably when (if) they realize they are about to be killed.
You mention pigs. We raised pigs. Not cages... just typical barnyard animals with acres to wander around. When a sow gave birth, it was routine for her to step on or roll over onto a few piglets and kill them. And, of course the runt(s) would die within days; we'd hold them by the rear legs and slam them into the side of the barn. Killed fast. Never considered using nitrogen to suffocate then. Never worried much about how many milliseconds it took for pain to travel to their brain in the moment before they were knocked out. Seems sort of silly.
And don't get me started on chickens. Domesticated chickens are hideous... roosters more so. Try raising a group of roosters and chickens and see what happens. They aren't the most civilized creatures. In any case, I keep ssying 'domesticated' chickens... I'm sure Whatever wild poultry these thing came from are probably normal. But, damn... I'm telling you... We have bred the IQ out of chickens... they are the closest thing to automatons you will find in a barnyard. I have more sympathy and respect for cockroaches than chickens.
The article states the sexers accidentally kill some chicks at first when learning because of the force required to expose the vents. The force required could provide some clue. The way the vent moves under some manipulations could make a difference.
I would rather the whole thing be solved with ultrasonic or some other imaging well before hatching.
The resolution of ultrasound, even at that little distance, is pretty bad. I doubt if the reproductive organs are big enough at that age. If I remember correctly, they don't differ that much at this stage either.
"When I asked Pam Freeman, editor of a poultry magazine, to introduce me to a chicken sexer, she said, "I honestly don't know anyone who has met a chicken sexer."
Chickens use the ZW sex chromosomes, and females are ZW while males are ZZ.
This means, among other things, that it is the female germ cell which determines the sex of the offspring, by contributing either a Z or a W.
My understanding is that with mammals, you can centrifuge sperm to (more-or-less) separate "X" and "Y" sperm, changing the odds of conception in the direction you choose; even if you found it economical to go this route with chickens, you wouldn't have the option, because all the chicken sperm is "Z".
And no, it's not centrifugation. The DNA in the chromosomes is stained, then a cell sorter with a laser determines which ones have more or less chromatin (the Y is missing an arm vs X).
Sexing as a Service, SaaS?
Next way would be to have a Human put the chick over a scanner in the right orientation. This solution is less attractive, because you still need to pay a worker, and that worker would only have to learn the sexing skill for a few weeks to be equally as fast as the machine...
Now, with CRISPR and genetic engineering, it may become possible one day to sex them at the egg stage by expressing a simple gene. A tiny biopsy, similar to in ovo vaccination, would reveal the sex. But the consumers don't like genetic engineering...
In cattle, this is a lot easier, because bull semen can be diluted quite heavily and still produce viable offspring.
as far as breeding something more noticeable is probably possible, the problem is when you find that trait and breed it into the variety, do you bring down the productivity of the variety. Is a 2% reduction in productivity of the chicken (over the course of its life) pay for the 3-4 seconds it takes for a chicken sexer to make a decision? Even if the sexer makes $60k/year and it takes them 4 seconds to make a decision, it only costs 3 cents to make a decision. There are a whole bunch of other considerations (life of avg layer, input costs per egg, etc). I don't know the answer, but is all that worth the risk that the productivity takes a 5% or 10% hit instead of 2%.