Eggs of them without brother on the shelves Interior

As a result, day-old chicks must no longer be killed because life is over before they are born. The new method should be applied in the Netherlands during the next year.

With the new technique, the genus can be determined in the egg at the beginning of the breeding process. "This is done by laser cutting a very small hole in the eggshell to hatch the ninth day of the hatching process and extracting a tiny drop of embryo urine. Depending on the rate of hormones, it is possible to determine whether it is a rooster or a chicken, "says Martijn Haarman of the Seleggt consortium, the company said. organization behind the new technology.

Every year, 45 million day old male chicks are killed in the Netherlands. "This is a big social problem.In Germany, more attention has been paid here in recent years than in the Netherlands," Haarman said. Male chicks are killed because they do not lay and give almost no meat.

Seleggt is a joint venture between the Dutch incubator manufacturer HatchTech, the University of Leipzig and the German supermarket chain REWE.

This organization is about, not the only one dealing with sex determination of chicken eggs. Recently, the Leiden In Ovo biotechnology company, a spin-off from the University of Leiden, has won a multi-million dollar investment to develop a comparable method.