Sexsorting of eggs in the hatchery

Important results from the project

DANSiC develops a method for sorting new laid eggs in male, female or not fertilized. One goal for the project is to establish robust egg sorting algorithms, which are stable during long term use and also functions for eggs from different kinds of hens. The second goal is to further develop the egg-sorting method, such that it can be implemented in the equipment for egg handling used today in the hatchery.

Expected long term effects

If the eggs are sex-sorted in the hatchery or already in the hen stable, half the amount of eggs will produce the same number of wanted chickens. The space needed in the incubators will be half, the amount of egg shell and not hatched eggs to destroy will be half. The sexsorting of the new hatched chickens is not needed, meaning that the persons performing this stressful and monotonous work are not needed. The sex-sorting, today performed by investigating the length of the quill of the chicken, is stressful for the chicken and might influence their development.

Approach and implementation

DANSiC´s method for sexsorting of eggs makes use of only the naturally emitted gases from new laid eggs. Facit is needed for advanced dataprocessing. Swedfarm delivers the eggs and hatch and sex-sort them after the measurements. A large amount of eggs need to be analysed to establish robust algorithms, which sorts the eggs in male, female or not fertilized. We have initiated means for the method to become semi-automatic, to establish more reproducible and efficient results from the measurements in the lab and further develop the method for implementation in the hatchery.