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You can now buy eggs from in-ovo sexed hens

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

#101

Post by aaronbaugher »

noah_buddy wrote: post #78

This is the sort of issue that I think exposes a very interesting paradox in the average person. People are worried about seemingly extraordinary cruelty perpetrated against a cute animal (maceration of young chicks) but basically accept regular, banal cruelty against typical farm animals (the practice of eating farming and eating meat and eggs). I personally think the cause is at least on balance positive morally fo…

I think the factory egg industry has already stripped the resources/comfort down as far as possible, so I don't see how this could make that any worse.

I'm normally resistant to claims that a new technology is going to make an unpleasant situation better, but in this case, I'm sympathetic. I'd rather get rid of the egg factories and have eggs raised the way my grandma did (and I still do). But that's not going to happen as long as people live in large cities. So if there's a way to identify the male eggs so they can be used as food before the chicks start to develop, rather than letting them hatch and then grinding up living, breathing birds, I'd have to say that's an improvement.

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

#102

Post by em-bee »

RansomStark wrote: post #66
cFyrute wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a clump of cells. Maybe the hen isn't ready to start a family and is still discovering herself? Her broody her choice.

Not a fan of the delivery, but, I think its an interesting point, and that both movements have a similar idea at their core, that life begins at birth / hatching. I think the parallels are interesting.

but if we go there we need to ask a more fundamental question. (to avoid a misinterpretation of what i am saying, i'd like to make clear that i am not vegan or vegetarian, i do eat meat and eggs)

the question on where life begins is rather irrelevant until we answer the question of where the life of a chicken is supposed to end.

if the possibility that life may begin at conception is going to be a consideration when destroying eggs because they are male, then the same consideration must be made when we chose to eat eggs in the first place.

we can't argue that eating eggs is ok, but destroying them is not.

consequently, as long as we eat eggs the question of when life begins is not really relevant.

the relevant questions are: can we avoid destroying/wasting those eggs at all (can we eat them?) and if ee have to destroy them, what is the most humane way to go about it? my intuition suggests that destroying the eggs is more humane than letting them hatch

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

#103

Post by yesfitz »

nashashmi wrote: post #73

I am disturbed to find unwanted male chicks get “culled” because there is no market value for them in egg production. And there is no need for them in meat production. This tech is able to select the female eggs only for hatching and redirect the male eggs for egging. The result is we have more eggs for people. And less waste of resources. Win win. Also a win for PETA. Something like this should be adopted en masse f…

The eggs that humans consume are unfertilized. The eggs containing males are fertilized and will not be sold in stores. They will be macerated while they're still in the egg instead of after hatching.

Not much of a moral victory for anyone, especially considering that the hens that get to live don't have good lives.

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

#104

Post by RansomStark »

em-bee wrote: post #102
RansomStark wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a fan of the delivery, but, I think its an interesting point, and that both movements have a similar idea at their core, that life begins at birth / hatching. I think the parallels are interesting.

but if we go there we need to ask a more fundamental question. (to avoid a misinterpretation of what i am saying, i'd like to make clear that i am not vegan or vegetarian, i do eat meat and eggs) the question on where life begins is rather irrelevant until we answer the question of where the life of a chicken is supposed to end. if the possibility that life may begin at conception is going to be a consideration when…

That's not quite right. These male chicks are from fertilized eggs. They are the ones that, had they been female, would have become the next set of egg layers.

The eggs we eat, at least the factory farmed variety, and most / all from commercial egg farms are not fertilized. Hens lay whether they've known the touch of a rooster or not. [0].

[0] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/can_you_hatch_an_egg_bought_fr...

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

#105

Post by aaronbaugher »

nemomarx wrote: post #98
michaelmrose wrote: post #13

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

I wouldn't have thought we don't eat roosters. We eat bulls, so the line of thought that you use one sex for production and one for meat is kinda easy? (and hens for meat when they age out of laying etc)

It's actually somewhat the same in cattle. There are beef breeds of cattle for meat and dairy breeds for milk. Dairy breeds tend to be skinnier and don't grow as efficiently, so the bulls don't make good beef steers. There's kind of a specialty market in them for people who think a dairy steer raised and fed over a longer time for meat is better than the beef breeds that have been focused on efficient growth. But some dairy bull calves are just killed. The heifer calves are far more valuable.

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

#106

Post by yesfitz »

ndr wrote: post #59

Does anyone know _how_ the detection process works? And is there anything done to the hen or the egg during that process that could make the egg less healthy or nutritious?

From the article that you're commenting on:

"There are multiple approaches to in-ovo sexing. One of the most prominent approaches uses advanced imaging to detect subtle optical differences between male and female embryos."

"Another widely adopted technique involves taking a small fluid sample from inside the egg to test for sex-specific hormones or genetic markers. Kipster’s eggs, launching later this year, will use a technology of this class employing PCR analysis to detect the sex chromosome, developed by the company Respeggt."

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

#107

Post by nemomarx »

aaronbaugher wrote: post #105
nemomarx wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have thought we don't eat roosters. We eat bulls, so the line of thought that you use one sex for production and one for meat is kinda easy? (and hens for meat when they age out of laying etc)

It's actually somewhat the same in cattle. There are beef breeds of cattle for meat and dairy breeds for milk. Dairy breeds tend to be skinnier and don't grow as efficiently, so the bulls don't make good beef steers. There's kind of a specialty market in them for people who think a dairy steer raised and fed over a longer time for meat is better than the beef breeds that have been focused on efficient growth. But som…

TIL, very interesting. I guess you can't escape specialization anywhere.

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

#108

Post by ashtonbaker »

jacknews wrote: post #71
ashtonbaker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't feed male chicks - from the first paragraph: > in the United States alone, approximately 350 million male chicks are routinely culled each year, typically by methods such as maceration (being ground up alive).

but they'd save on incubating the eggs which they could otherwise use or sell.

I suppose that is true. But I imagine that the scale of egg incubation to produce hens is a relatively small portion of total egg production, since each hen produces many eggs. You'd probably have to compare the cost of incubating an egg and the labor to manually sex the chick to the per-egg cost of this technology. I would be surprised if that comes out in favor of the in-egg-sexing tech right now, but it would be great if it did.

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

#109

Post by nashashmi »

yesfitz wrote: post #103
nashashmi wrote: post #73

I am disturbed to find unwanted male chicks get “culled” because there is no market value for them in egg production. And there is no need for them in meat production. This tech is able to select the female eggs only for hatching and redirect the male eggs for egging. The result is we have more eggs for people. And less waste of resources. Win win. Also a win for PETA. Something like this should be adopted en masse f…

The eggs that humans consume are unfertilized. The eggs containing males are fertilized and will not be sold in stores. They will be macerated while they're still in the egg instead of after hatching. Not much of a moral victory for anyone, especially considering that the hens that get to live don't have good lives.

Had to look this up: https://learnpoultry.com/fertilized-vs-unfertilized-chicken-...

Apparently, many of the eggs sold in stores are infertile. But fertile eggs can still be eaten. The process of storing them away is a little bit more cumbersome because they go bad if they are not eaten fresh.

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

#110

Post by grues-dinner »

zahlman wrote: post #84
aaronbaugher wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Small-time chicken owner here. The best ratio of hens to roosters is about 10-to-1. Each rooster will have his "harem" of hens that keep him busy, and the hens will be content. Any more roosters than that and they'll fight a lot, and the roosters that don't have their own group of hens will hang around the others looking for a chance to rape them while their regular rooster is occupied or too far away. I…

> The best ratio of hens to roosters is about 10-to-1. Each rooster will have his "harem" of hens that keep him busy, and the hens will be content. Any more roosters than that and they'll fight a lot, and the roosters that don't have their own group of hens will hang around the others looking for a chance to rape them while their regular rooster is occupied or too far away. It can be pretty hard on the hens. It seems…

There's no real such thing as a "natural" chicken, but their ancestors, red junglefowl, are similar. In fact, healthier females produce more males (https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/119/3/840/5561973). Perhaps it's evolutionary turned out to be good for fitness of the species if 90% of the males are killed by other males or otherwise don't mate and that outweighs "wasting" 4.5/10 eggs. Nature doesn't "care" (yes, yes, active verb for non-conscious process) if it's pretty, just that it works.

In general, life in nature just ain't that fun as a junior member of an r-selected species, which includes chickens.

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