Chick sexing

[1] Chicken sexing is practiced mostly by large commercial hatcheries to separate female chicks or "pullets" (destined to lay eggs for commercial sale) from the males or "cockerels" (most of which are killed within days of hatching because they are irrelevant to egg production).

The females and a limited number of males kept for meat production are then put on different feeding programs appropriate for their commercial roles.

In farms that produce eggs, males are unwanted; for meat production, separate male and female lines for breeding are maintained to produce the hybrid birds that are sold for the table, and chicks of the wrong sex in either line are unwanted.

[4] The eminence or genital organ is found midway on the lower rim of the vent, and looks like a very small pimple.

Sexing these chickens can be quite difficult, but with regular practice, the sexer will eventually learn to identify the differences.

After their discovery, interested poultry breeders hired those who had been trained in Masui and Hashimoto's technique, or sent representatives to Japan to learn it.

The sex-linked slow-feathering gene can be used for crosses where the sex of the chicks can be determined at hatching time by the length of the wing feathers.

Automated systems to determine the sex of the developing chick long before hatching were first introduced in 2018.

The Keeler Optical (English) or Chicktester (Japanese) machine features a blunt-ended telescopic tube, containing a light.