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Vent sexing in Wenchang, Hainan, China (2014). Vent sexing, also known simply as venting, involves squeezing the feces out of the chick, which opens up the chick's anal vent (called a cloaca) slightly, allowing the chicken sexer to see if the chick has a small "bump", which would indicate that the chick is a male.
In total, around 4-7 billion male chicks and up to 40 million female ducks per year may be killed in this way. [3] Because of animal welfare concerns, there is societal opposition to chick culling. In the 2010s, scientists developed technologies to determine the sexes of chicks when they are still in their eggs (in-ovo sexing).
On average, a chicken lays one egg a day for a number of days (a "clutch"), then does not lay for one or more days, then lays another clutch. Originally, the hen presumably laid one clutch, became broody, and incubated the eggs. Selective breeding over the centuries has produced hens that lay more eggs than they can hatch.
As Golden Comet roosters are not favoured for egg production, any male chicks that hatch are not preserved. [8] They are ideal for small-scale agriculture. [9] They can lay up to 6 eggs per week on average, that is 330 eggs on average, per annum. [6] They can start producing eggs when they are 16 weeks old. [9] Golden Comet hens are productive ...
Kavanau (1987) was the first to find that unique bi-parental care seen in modern birds probably evolved from extinct birds. They developed the ability to provide protection, escorting, nurturing and egg guarding abilities for their young. Evolution of homeothermy and flight most likely occurred in bi-parental birds with precocial chicks.
A black sex-link hen. Sex-links [1] are crossbred chickens whose color at hatching is differentiated by sex, thus making chick sexing an easier process. Sex-links come in several varieties.
Castrated males can go broody with baby chicks, [8] showing that broodiness is not limited to females, however, castrated males do not incubate eggs. Contrary to common opinion, the temperature of broody hens barely differs from that of laying hens. [8] Broody hens pluck feathers from their chest, using them to cover the eggs.
The concept of an auto-sexing breed of chicken is due to the geneticist Reginald Punnett, who during the First World War had already proposed the technique of cross-breeding chickens carrying the barred gene (B) with others to produce sex-linked chicks with plumage differences that could easily be distinguished.