Lower Saxony's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection funds project to determine the sex of a closed hen's egg

The "Clinical Sensoring and Monitoring" working group has many years of experience in in ovo sex determination in the opened hen's egg. In recent years, a spectroscopic method has been developed that allows sex determination with high accuracy and hatching rate early in the incubation process. However, the technologically demanding egg opening within the air bubble of the hen's egg and an a priori existing risk of infection make it difficult to accept the method in practice.

As part of the project"Molecular mechanisms for sex determination in the closed hen's egg" funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, the basic principles for spectroscopic in ovo sex determination in the closed hen's egg are now to be investigated. The procedure should be able to be realized at an early stage of incubation and with comparatively inexpensive and practical optical methods.

The aim of the project is therefore to carry out basic experimental investigations into the sex-specific degree of oxygenation and the oxygen affinity of the embryonic blood in the first days of incubation. The data will be evaluated using the latest methods of spectral analysis in order to minimize interference with the sex-specific information and to ensure a robust classification. The findings will be used to confirm our hypothesis about the sex-specific ratio.