Improving animal welfare by rescuing male chicks from culling with a next-generation test for gene-specific in ovo sexing

Currently, 50% of all 12 billion layer chicks that hatched worldwide are male, which are considered to be inefficient for meat production. Subsequently, the industry kills a large number of day-old healthy animals, creating several ethical issues and dissatisfaction from the consumers. Some methods used today can differentiate the males in the eggs, separate them, and avoid their growth until their killing upon birth. These methods are called “in ovo sexing” and represent a breakthrough for the poultry industry, allowing a more humane male culling. However, none of the methods used today for this purpose fulfils all the industry requirements. They are expensive, lack automation and are time-consuming. This results in significant barriers to their usage. These methods are not practical to be used for a large-scale application. Such a representative industry requires a system that can be profitable to them, and, at the same time, avoid ethical issues from animal abuse. In this PhD, it is intended to develop a new in ovo sexing method for gender identification of chicken embryos, which can suppress the abovementioned issues. The technology intended to be developed shall use biosensor techniques and is supposed to detect specific biomarkers, that are highly related to the embryonic chicken gender. Finally, microfluidic technologies bring the possibility of an all-in-one process, a low price, a fast process, requires low quantities of sample to present accurate results and avoid the need for specialized personnel.