Chicken Welfare: In-Ovo Sexing

We are exploring the promotion of in-ovo sexing technologies, which identify the sex of chicks before hatching and can reduce or eliminate the culling of male chicks in the egg industry.

Billions

of male chicks culled worldwide each year

Day 1

males are typically culled within hours of hatching

Before hatch

in-ovo sexing acts inside the egg, before a chick hatches

The welfare problem

Laying hens and meat chickens come from different breeds. In egg production, female chicks grow into laying hens — but their brothers cannot lay eggs and are the wrong breed for efficient meat production. As a result, the egg industry culls vast numbers of male chicks shortly after they hatch, typically by maceration or gassing. This is one of the largest-scale routine practices in all of animal agriculture, affecting billions of animals every year.

What in-ovo sexing is

In-ovo sexing determines the sex of an embryo inside the egg, during incubation and before a chick hatches. Eggs identified as male can then be removed from the hatching process, so that male chicks are never hatched and culled. Several approaches are in use or development, differing in how early in incubation they work and how they read the embryo's sex:

Biomarker / hormone-based methods that sample a tiny amount of fluid from the egg and test for sex-linked markers.
Optical and spectroscopic methods that read signals such as feather color or blood through the shell, with little or no penetration of the egg.
Imaging and sensing approaches aimed at sexing earlier in incubation and at the speed a commercial hatchery requires.

In-ovo sexing at a glance

What it does: Identifies the sex of a chick before it hatches, so male eggs can be removed from the hatch.
Welfare benefit: Reduces or eliminates the culling of live male chicks in egg production.
Where it works: Already deployed at commercial scale in parts of Europe; expanding to new markets and technologies.
Key variables: How early in incubation it can sex, throughput and cost per egg, accuracy, and what happens to male eggs.

Why adoption lags behind the science

In several European markets, in-ovo sexing is already being used at commercial scale, and male-chick culling has been restricted by law. Elsewhere, adoption is far from universal. The bottlenecks are largely practical and economic:

Cost per egg and throughput. Technologies must run fast enough and cheaply enough for high-volume commercial hatcheries to use them without making eggs uncompetitive.
Timing within incubation. Sexing earlier in development matters for both welfare and operations; methods vary in how early they work.
Hatchery integration. Equipment has to fit existing hatchery lines, accuracy must be high, and there must be a plan for the male eggs that are removed.
Market and policy signals. Retailer commitments, consumer demand, and regulation strongly influence whether producers invest.

What we are doing

Our work on chicken welfare is aimed at promoting and accelerating the spread of in-ovo sexing. It includes:

Research and landscape analysis. Tracking the technologies, their readiness, and where the cost, speed, and timing gaps remain.
Stakeholder engagement. Working with technology developers, hatcheries, producers, retailers, researchers, and welfare organizations to understand what would unlock wider adoption.
Partnership-building. Exploring partnerships that can help higher-welfare hatching practices reach more of the egg supply chain.

For chickens, the prize is enormous: a technology that, fully adopted, could spare billions of animals from being hatched only to be culled.

Get involved

If you develop in-ovo sexing technology, run a hatchery, source eggs at scale, fund welfare work, or research this area, we would value the conversation. Get in touch.