LifeSensors, Inc., a biotechnology company, has announced a new sensor technology for determining the gender of poultry in ovo. The technology is designed to allow sorting of male and female eggs before they hatch. The newly discovered sensor will save money by conserving vaccine and feed costs. It will streamline hatchery functions and create a more efficient poultry industry.  The sensor measures estrogen using a fine needle to aspirate a small amount of fluid from the egg’s allantonic sac, where female embryos produce the sex hormone. Male embryos do not produce estrogen.  The fluid is then introduced into an engineered human estrogen receptor that fluoresces when exposed to estrogen.

Male chicks are usually eliminated from large poultry farms which concentrate on egg production by females.  Thus a few key benefits of the sensor technology include cost savings through reduction in housing, vaccine and feed expenses; increased efficiency; and enhanced accuracy. These findings were published in Journal of Animal Sciences USA.  Current chicken sexing is carried out manually, a time-consuming and expensive process.  When LifeSensors’ gender sorting sensor is implemented in hatcheries, it will automate many poultry hatchery functions.

This technology has the potential to fundamentally change the poultry industry as pointed out by The Economist.  Future hatcheries will be able to robotically sort chickens, ducks and turkeys eggs before hatching. Dr. Tauseef Butt, inventor of the sensor, indicated, that “implementation of the gender sorting sensor will require a few feats of engineering to incorporate into the egg sorting machines currently operational in many hatcheries”.  “The poultry industry is very advanced when it comes to vaccination of embryos in eggs.” states Dr. Butt and then asks the question, “Why hasn’t this been done already?”

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