GERMANY - On a recent visit to the University of Leipzig to review the latest research there, the agriculture minister has called for a practical method to determine the sex of chicken embryos in order to bring to an end the culling of male layer chicks by the end of 2016. Mr Schmidt said that, by the end of 2016, there should be prototypes of a device that determines the sex of chicken embryos at just three days of incubation and then sorts the eggs automatically by gender.
He added that, when such a device is available on the market, there will be no need for the nation’s hatcheries to kill male chicks, a practice that will soon belong in the past.
In the meantime…
