Non-invasive broiler chick embryo sexing based on opacity value of incubated eggs

摘要

In boiler production there is a gender biased preference for males, while for layer strains it is females. Thus, there is need for non-intrusive, early sex discrimination of chick embryos that is currently not being met. Hence, the motivation for the current study to investigate sex based growth difference in terms of opacity in order to classify the sex of incubated eggs. As a model, eggs from a broiler strain (ROSS 308) were sorted based on size, mass and shell color, and then incubated. During incubation an Embryonic Vital Scope, which consists of LEDs and a Si-photodiode integrated with amplifire that receives the light that passes through the egg, was used to measure average output voltage for individual eggs. After hatching feather sexing was used to determine the actual gender of the day-old chicks. A two-sample t-test was used to see the significant differences between male and female groups and gender classification model were developed using various algorithms. As the embryo became larger during incubation, the amount of transmitted light was reduced. Consequently, the opacity, the ratio of input LED current over average output voltage, increased. Male chick embryos showed higher opacity than female embryos (p-value 0.05). This method allowed us to determine the embryo gender before hatching with an accuracy of 84%. Although this method is still not 100% accurate, it is an important step towards developing an early, accurate and non-invasive means for sexing chick embryos in an industrial setting in the near future.