A chicken sexer is a person who has been specially trained to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings. Sex, in the scope of this article and category, refers to the male and female duality of biology and reproduction. ... Binomial name Gallus gallus A chicken (Gallus gallus) is a type of domesticated bird which is often raised as a type of poultry. ...

Chicks of different sexes can appear quite similar.

Download high resolution version (640x737, 45 KB)More chicks from http://www. ... Download high resolution version (640x737, 45 KB)More chicks from http://www. ...

Who wants to sex chickens?

Chicken sexing is practised mostly by large commercial hatcheries, who have two different feeding programmes, one for the females who are destined to lay eggs for commercial sale, and the others for the males, most of whom will be fattened up for sale as meat. The chicken sexer puts the chicken hatchlings on the appropriate track early, enabling those chickens to receive optimal nourishment for their likely commercial role from an early age. Different segments of the poultry industry sex chickens for various reasons. In the factory farm that produces eggs, males are unwanted; for meat production, separate male and female lines for breeding are maintained to produce the hybrid birds that are sold for the table, and chicks of the wrong sex in either line are unwanted. Early culling of chicks of the unwanted sexes reduces costs. Female symbol Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces egg cells. ... A carton of free-range chicken eggs Ostrich egg Bird eggs are a common food source. ... Male symbol Male is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces sperm. ... Meat is animal tissue (mainly muscle) used as food. ... Duck amongst other poultry The Poultry-dealer, after Cesare Vecellio. ... Hardy Meyers chicken operation near Petal, Mississippi. ...

How to sex a chicken

There are two chief methods of sexing chicks: feather sexing and vent sexing. Closeup on a single white feather A feather is one of the epidermal growths that forms the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on a bird. ... In zoological anatomy, a cloaca is the posterior opening that serves as the only such opening for the intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts of certain animal species. ...

Feather sexing

Feather sexing is easy, but it requires that the chickens be specially bred to manifest their sex in differences in the feathers as hatchlings. Male chickens in these breeds have longer wing pinfeathers than the females do, which makes them relatively easy to tell apart. Most chickens do not have these traits bred into them, and the hatchlings are identical to all but the skilled eye of the professional chicken sexer. A breed is a domesticated subspecies or infrasubspecies of an animal. ...

Vent sexing

Vent sexing is not easy. The sexual organs of birds are located within the body; the professional vent sexer has studied their external appearance, which can fall into as many as fifteen basic patterns, and learned to identify which ones are male and which female. Vent sexing is a difficult trade to master; many professional vent sexers are Japanese, where the art originated. The mystery of vent sexing was revealed to the Western world when a seminal paper was published in Japan in 1933 by Professors Masui and Hashimoto, which was soon translated into English under the title Sexing baby chicks. After Masui and Hashimoto's discovery, interested poultry breeders brought in people who had been trained by them to teach the art, or sent representatives to Japan to learn it. The skill is complex and has been likened to skill at playing chess and other crafts or games where pattern recognition is the key to success. 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2005-09-05, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Pattern recognition is a field within the area of machine learning. ...

The chicken sexing machine

In the 1950s, several machines were invented that illuminated and magnified the cloacas of newborn chicks, and chicks could be sexed by inspecting them with this machine. This method is obsolete; only two manufacturers made the machines, and both have left the business. // Events and trends This map shows two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1959. ... In zoological anatomy, a cloaca is the posterior opening that serves as the only such opening for the intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts of certain animal species. ...

As chickens grow up. . .

Small poultry farmers whose operations are not of sufficient size to warrant hiring a chicken sexer must wait until the hatchlings are four to six weeks old before learning the sexes of their chickens. At that time their secondary sex characteristics begin to appear, so anyone can sex a chicken. Duck amongst other poultry The Poultry-dealer, after Cesare Vecellio. ... Bales of hay on a farm near Ames, Iowa A farm is the basic unit in agriculture. ... A peafowl displays its secondary sexual characteristics (long, colored feathers). ...

See also

• Baby chick blender

Look up baby chick blender in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

External links

• Poultry: Sexing of day-old chicks
• Japanese chicken sexing championship
• The art of chicken sexing
• Gender identification of chickens prior to hatch (PDF)
• Abstract: The art of chicken sexing - a cognitive science discussion
  • The art of chicken sexing - full article (PDF)