Have you ever thought about egg production?
Only female chickens — hens — can lay eggs. So if you are breeding chickens for egg production, what do you do with the males, or roosters?
The sad fact is that the roosters have no use, so they are usually put to death very quickly after hatching. It’s called “chick culling” and no, the chickens who lay eggs and those we eat are different, thanks to the modern specialized, homogenized food-production industry. To them, roosters of the egg-laying variety are even more useless than drone bees. So millions die swiftly every year, and you don’t want to know how.
But there is relatively good news. The industry is working to phase out this practice through , which will be able to identify the sex of an embryo by examining the egg right after it’s laid. This technique views an egg under infrared light. Male and female embryos have different cell distributions, which can be identified in this way. The identified eggs with male embryos could then be sold.
At least it’s better than having a lifespan measured in minutes.
For more information, visit http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/male-chick-culling-technology-1.3647228 . The photo came from that website.