Culling day-old chicks is getting less and less accepted in the modern world. After all, the awareness of animal welfare is gaining ground, particularly in Europe.
However, new technology is available now to determine gender in the egg during incubation. No future dreaming anymore, but reality. And practiced in Germany and The Netherlands already.
Everyone knows about the current and still common practice of culling day-old male chicks from layer breeds. After sexing, chicks end up in two batches: males and females.
The latter will be raised to start their life as commercial layers. The males are culled, either by gassing or shredding and usually end up in alternative value chains, like being fed to zoo animals, processed in petfood, or biogas production.
Regrettably there was no other solution, despite sometimes massive public protest for animal welfare. Raising males for meat production is an option.
But as these birds have been bred specifically for the layer sector, they gain less weight and need a lot of feed because they are very active. So raising them for meat production is only a niche solution.
But good news for animal welfare!
New techniques have come into practice, such as the high tech respeggt method, making it possible to end this practice and improve animal welfare.
As a result, male chicks will not hatch from the egg and thus they will not suffer either.
Particularly this is good news for hatcheries of layer breeds in Germany, as culling day-old chicks is o fficially prohibited in this country since January 1, 2022.
Also in European countries, like France and Italy, legislation has been defi ned already, and legislation in other countries is to be expected soon.
After all, Europe was also in the forefront of the ban on conventional cages for layers, which came into practice in 2012.
Fair chance that an EU wide ban on culling day-old chicks in the not too far away future, will also become reality.
Image 1. Eggs arrive from hatcheries and are incubated in setters in the respeggt facility
“A hatchery must have ample volume to make this technology within reach”, says Chief Operating Officer Carmen Uphoff of the respeggt group in Germany.
“Apart from the investment in the equipment, also ample room is needed inside the hatchery for logistics and storage capacity. Not every layer hatchery has this space available. However, missing space does never have to be a reason not to install this technology. Additional space can easily be realized by ...
