You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens • Hacker News Board

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#21

Post by throwawaymaths » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

homeless_engi wrote: post #16

throwawaymaths wrote: post #3

is the consumer vote necessary? it seems like producers might appreciate saving 50% on feeding chicks

Male chicks are not feed nor raised but rather fed into a device quite similar to a wood chipper shortly áfter birth. You can read more about it here [1] or find some quite graphic videos on YouTube. This is addressed in the article: "In polling, only 10% of Americans correctly identify that male chicks in the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching. A plurality mistakenly believe these chicks are raised for m…

yeah I'm aware of male culling.

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#22

Post by fhd2 » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

homeless_engi wrote: post #16

throwawaymaths wrote: post #3

is the consumer vote necessary? it seems like producers might appreciate saving 50% on feeding chicks

Male chicks are not feed nor raised but rather fed into a device quite similar to a wood chipper shortly áfter birth. You can read more about it here [1] or find some quite graphic videos on YouTube. This is addressed in the article: "In polling, only 10% of Americans correctly identify that male chicks in the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching. A plurality mistakenly believe these chicks are raised for m…

"10% even think that male chickens can lay eggs"

I really didn't see that one coming.

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#23

Post by tastyfreeze » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #18

Maskawanian wrote: post #8

[flagged]

male chicks aren't useful if we bring them into being we will have to kill them.

Male chicks make as good of soup as hens. However, roosters are assholes and don't get along with other roosters by the time they are butcher weight.

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#24

Post by homeless_engi » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

monster_truck wrote: post #6

There's no way that math is right. The wikipedia article says the US culls billions of male chicks annually. Was this written by an LLM? heh

The US culls 350 million male chicks per year, per this article. Wikipedia says billions of male chicks are culled worldwide, which seems plausible when accounting for EU, China, India, SA, SEA etc. The citation on Wikipedia looks legit to me as well.

Edit: Wikipedia does indeed cite several different figures, including a "billions" number which does not seem plausible. Thanks monster_truck for pointing this out, and apologies for my misunderstanding!

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#25

Post by nemomarx » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:44 PM UTC

Interesting that this is already a quarter of the market in Europe? So presumably most of the wrinkles in the technique have been solved by now

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#26

Post by sebzim4500 » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:45 PM UTC

monster_truck wrote: post #6

There's no way that math is right. The wikipedia article says the US culls billions of male chicks annually. Was this written by an LLM? heh

IIRC humanity eats like 70B chickens a year so sounds very plausible to me.

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#27

Post by michaelmior » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:45 PM UTC

monster_truck wrote: post #6

There's no way that math is right. The wikipedia article says the US culls billions of male chicks annually. Was this written by an LLM? heh

The Wikipedia article clearly has some errors, but I'm not sure where since I'm not an expert. In one spot, it says 7 billion chicks are culled annually worldwide, in other it says 8.5 billion just in the US. I assume these are likely estimates taken from different sources or at different time periods, but still, I wouldn't assume Wikipedia is accurate.

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#28

Post by kreco » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #13

How do 10% not know boys don't lay eggs and the plurality not realize we don't eat roosters

If you have a chicken farm, you likely eat roosters time to time.

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#29

Post by miningape » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

fhd2 wrote: post #22

homeless_engi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Male chicks are not feed nor raised but rather fed into a device quite similar to a wood chipper shortly áfter birth. You can read more about it here [1] or find some quite graphic videos on YouTube. This is addressed in the article: "In polling, only 10% of Americans correctly identify that male chicks in the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching. A plurality mistakenly believe these chicks are raised for m…

"10% even think that male chickens can lay eggs" I really didn't see that one coming.

Yeah I got whiplash from my head snapping back to read that again

Re: You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

#30

Post by xigoi » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

fhd2 wrote: post #22

homeless_engi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Male chicks are not feed nor raised but rather fed into a device quite similar to a wood chipper shortly áfter birth. You can read more about it here [1] or find some quite graphic videos on YouTube. This is addressed in the article: "In polling, only 10% of Americans correctly identify that male chicks in the egg industry are killed shortly after hatching. A plurality mistakenly believe these chicks are raised for m…

"10% even think that male chickens can lay eggs" I really didn't see that one coming.

There was also that time when a milk company wrote the names of the cows who produced the milk on the cartons and some feminist complained that all the names were female.