I once attended a lecture where a law professor used chicken sexing as a metaphor for jurisprudence. It’s surprisingly apt.
The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
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Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#22I've worked with chickens for years. Among lay people, being able to correctly sex a chicken after 2-3 weeks is a difficult skill. It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
Gruesome, but I would dispute painful. The present state of things is the least bad it could be while still allowing us to enjoy the prices we do.
> The present state of things is the least bad it could be while still allowing us to enjoy the prices we do.
That statement belongs in a dystopian sci-fi novel.
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#23I've worked with chickens for years. Among lay people, being able to correctly sex a chicken after 2-3 weeks is a difficult skill. It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
I thought the males were just thrown into the mincer, dying within the instant they hit the blades? It looks gruesome, but I would hardly call it painful.
How can you tell? It sounds pretty painful. There is a painless way of killing, through asphyxiation by inert gas (e.g. nitrogen, but not carbon dioxide).
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#24I've worked with chickens for years. Among lay people, being able to correctly sex a chicken after 2-3 weeks is a difficult skill. It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
Gruesome, but I would dispute painful. The present state of things is the least bad it could be while still allowing us to enjoy the prices we do.
I'm not sure how you tie levels of pain to prices for eggs. (And I'd strongly dispute that being ground up isn't painful. Call it a hunch)
On the upside, there's research on in-egg sexing.
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#25Any progress on genetically engineering chicken so that only female chicks are produced, or even better artificially producing eggs without any chickens at all?
This may actually be more difficult for chickens.
Chickens use the ZW sex chromosomes, and females are ZW while males are ZZ.
This means, among other things, that it is the female germ cell which determines the sex of the offspring, by contributing either a Z or a W.
My understanding is that with mammals, you can centrifuge sperm to (more-or-less) separate "X" and "Y" sperm, changing the odds of conception in the direction you choose; even if you found it economical to go this route with chickens, you wouldn't have the option, because all the chicken sperm is "Z".
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the males were just thrown into the mincer, dying within the instant they hit the blades? It looks gruesome, but I would hardly call it painful.
How can you tell? It sounds pretty painful. There is a painless way of killing, through asphyxiation by inert gas (e.g. nitrogen, but not carbon dioxide).
Googling suggests that animal welfare organisations currently suggest maceration is the best alternative, being better than carbon dioxide which gets second place. Do you happen to know why they don't promote your suggestion of suffucation with nitrogen?
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#27I've worked with chickens for years. Among lay people, being able to correctly sex a chicken after 2-3 weeks is a difficult skill. It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
Why not grow the males to be for eating?
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gruesome, but I would dispute painful. The present state of things is the least bad it could be while still allowing us to enjoy the prices we do.
I'm not sure how you tie levels of pain to prices for eggs. (And I'd strongly dispute that being ground up isn't painful. Call it a hunch) On the upside, there's research on in-egg sexing.
Without trying to sound cruel, the industrial grinders used for chickens are extremely fast and might act faster than the temporary threshold needed for the pain to be consciously perceived.
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#29I've worked with chickens for years. Among lay people, being able to correctly sex a chicken after 2-3 weeks is a difficult skill. It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
Why not grow the males to be for eating?
Roosters don't lay eggs, and somebody did the math and figured out the return on hens vs roosters is so much better it's not even worth raising the roosters.
Re: The Lucrative Art of Chicken Sexing (2017)
#30I've worked with chickens for years. Among lay people, being able to correctly sex a chicken after 2-3 weeks is a difficult skill. It's incredibly interesting that these people are able to do it so easily at such an early age. It's also put to very disturbing uses. The females go on to be used as layer hens and the males are kill within hours of hatching - generally in gruesome/painful ways.
Gruesome, but I would dispute painful. The present state of things is the least bad it could be while still allowing us to enjoy the prices we do.
Why would you dispute painful?