In-ovo sexing of Muscovy and Mule duck eggs Will also work for chickens.

[raingarden]

It sounds like animal welfare extremism to me and I would not condone it. The next debate will be about exactly when an embronic brain becomes sentient.

 

[nicalandia]

The next debate will be about exactly when an embronic brain becomes sentient.

There is no debate on that. As it has been posted before. It's between 10-15 days. So anything before the embryo does not feel pain(which is the exact meaning of sentient)

 

[NatJ]

It sounds like animal welfare extremism to me and I would not condone it.

As a practical matter, the sooner they can tell the gender of the chicks, the sooner they can remove the male ones from the incubator. That means the same size incubator can hatch more pullets every month or every year. If they ever found a way to tell before incubation, so the "male" eggs could be sold for eating and never take up space in the incubator, that would be best of all (although I cannot think of any way that will be able to happen.)

So I am in favor of detecting the gender of chicks as early as possible, if that is cost-effective.

Apart from practical considerations, I don't much care what stage they kill the male chicks/embryos, although like @3KillerBs I definitely prefer they do it humanely, and put them to some ues (maybe into livestock food or pet food.)

If in-ovo sexing makes some oither people happier, because they don't hear about cute fluffy chicks being killed, I just consider that a pleasant side effect, not the main reason to do it.

 

[raingarden]

Fibro chicken flesh is not very appetizing to most people.

Just because an embryo can be stimulated does not mean that it feels pain.

 

[NatJ]

Fibro chicken flesh is not very appetizing to most people.

This would most likely be used with laying hens, whose main purpose is to lay eggs. By the time they are culled, they are old and tough, so they get turned into things like soup or chicken broth, or else used in animal food. The color of the flesh would not matter for animal food, and probably not for broth either. Even some kinds of soup would disguise the color (like chili with black beans.)

So I don't think it would be a big deal. The vast majority of chicken meat comes from Cornish Cross meat chickens, where both genders are raised for slaughter, so there is no need for in-ovo sexing with them.

Just because an embryo can be stimulated does not mean that it feels pain.

Does that mean they feel pain earlier, or later, or that we have no clue?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Fibro chicken flesh is not very appetizing to most people.

Just because an embryo can be stimulated does not mean that it feels pain.

Not a lot of people consume spent laying hens though outside of broth as far as I'm aware

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Yes, but that's just me with a LED flashlight on my bedroom. The machines we are talking about here are quite advanced and use AI Machine learning Inference to get more accurate. They are able to detect the difference in eye color of birds(in ducks that have that sex link trait). I feel that using Fibromelanosis would greatly help for chicken embryo sexing using the same advanced machines. Possibly able to sex those chicks even a few days earlier.

Oh, I see, okay. Misunderstanding on my part