Kuikens in ovo seksen

Abstract

At this moment many one-day male chicks are killed in the poultry industry. This raises social resistance. This resistance is one of the reasons to look for alternatives. The purpose of this study was to find possibilities for non-invasive gender identification in ovo. Important is that it’s not negative for hatch and chick quality. Research is done for hormones (estrogens), imaging (ultrasound and X-ray), heart rate and egg weight, especially the estrogens and ultrasound. Estrogens are a good way for gender identification in the allantoic fluid. A handicap for this invasive method is the damage of the eggshell. In this study a non-invasive method is used: Estrogens have been measured after 18 days of incubation on the outside of the eggshell. In the samples estrogens have been found, the concentration for female embryo’s was 19,1 pg/ml ± 5,3 and for male embryo’s 22,6 pg/ml ± 4,0. This is not a significant difference. This experiment should be repeated with some changes in the material en methods. Before starting the ultrasound-study the length and width of the gonads are measured. These data could be useful for ultrasound because gender identification is possible when the dimension can be measured on an ultrasound image. A difference is found in the left-right ratio of the width and the area of the gonads. For ultra-sound testing we used eggs which were incubated for 16 and 18 days. Ultrasound through the eggshell was not possible. After making a window in the eggshell the embryo could be seen very well. Gender identification by non-invasive ultrasound imaging seems impossible. More research is needed to explore the possibilities of this method.