Volume: 55 Issue: 4
Year: 2024, Page: 744-747, Doi: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2024.55.4.744-747
Received: Aug. 26, 2024 Accepted: Nov. 6, 2024 Published: Dec. 31, 2024
In layer industry, females are the preferable gender. This intensification gave rise to killing of billions of dayold
male chicks in commercial hatcheries on day-one itself. This practice results in the waste of hatching cost and
raises serious concern about animal welfare. The most reliable solution is determination of the sex of embryos prior
to hatch, preferably before incubation. In the current study, an attempt was made to identify sex of chick embryo before
incubation by using egg morphometry like weight, length and width. About 48 White leghorn laying hens of 30-32 and
50-52 weeks old (24 each) were reared in individual laying cages for a period of 120 days under the division of poultry
housing management, ICAR-Central Avian Research Institute, Izatnagar. Birds were inseminated with pooled semen
(1:8) at 5 days interval to collect hatching eggs and weight, length and width of eggs were recorded on daily basis. These
eggs were incubated and day- old chicks hatched from these eggs were vent sexed and the data from 2800 chicks were
collected and statistical analysis was carried out. Egg weight, length and width were found to have a significant effect
(p<0.05) on determining the sex of chicks. Regression analysis was done using various morphometric parameters of
egg for prediction of sex of chick from the above findings. These regression equations were made by using different
combinations of morphometric values. Using paired sample test, better predictions were found out which can be further
used for predicting the sex of eggs before incubation. .
Keywords: Sex determination, egg weight, egg morphometry
Abanikannda, O.T.F. and Leigh, A.O. 2015. Statistical determination of chick sex from pre-hatch egg measurements. Int. J. Livest. Prod. 6: 87-90.
Alin, K., Fujitani, S., Kashimori, A., Suzuki, T., Ogawa, Y. and Kondo, N. 2019. Non-invasive broiler chick embryo sexing based on opacity value of incubated eggs. Comput. Electron Agric. 158: 30-35.
Ankney, C.D. 1982. Sex ratio varies with egg sequence in lesser snow geese. The Auk. 99: 662-666.
Aslam, M.A., Hulst, M., Hoving-Bolink, R.A., Smits, M.A., de Vries, B., Weites, I., Groothuis, T.G. and Woelders, H. 2013. Yolk concentrations of hormones and glucose and egg weight and egg dimensions in unincubated chicken eggs, in relation to egg sex and hen body weight. Gen. Comp. Endocrinol. 187: 15-22.
Budi, I. 2021. Egg shape index for sex determination of post-hatch chicks in Pekin ducks: a solution for smallholder duck farming in Lombok Indonesia. Poult. Sci. 33: 1.
Buhl, A.C. 2013. Legal aspects of the prohibition on chick shredding in the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Global J. Animal Law. 37: 23-28.
Cordero, P.J., Griffith, S.C., Aparicio, J.M. and Parkin, D.T. 2000. Sexual dimorphism in house sparrow eggs. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 48: 353-357.
Galli, R., Preusse, G., Uckermann, O., Bartels, T., Krautwald-Junghanns, M.E., Koch, E. and Steiner, G. 2016. In-ovo sexing of domestic chicken eggs by raman spectroscopy. Anal. Chem. 88: 8657-8663.
Idahor, K.O., Akinola, L.A.F. and Chia, S.S. 2015. Sex predetermination in fowl using some egg parameters in north central Nigeria. J. Anim. Sci. Adv. 5: 1171
Kaleta, E.F. and Redmann, T. 2008. Approaches to determine the sex prior to and after incubation of chicken eggs and of day-old chicks. World Poult. Sci. J. 64: 391-399.
Milojević, M., Jokić, Ž. and Mitrović, S. 2019. Effects of morphometric indicators on incubation values of eggs and sex of the chicks of the light hen hybrids. AMEM. 73: 219.
Müller, W., Eising, C.M., Dijkstra, C. and Groothuis, T.G. 2002. Sex differences in yolk hormones depend on maternal social status in Leghorn chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus). Biol. Sci. 269: 2249-2255.
Ryder, J.P. 1983. Sex ratio and egg sequence in ring-billed gulls. The Auk. 100: 726-728.
Trivers, R.L. and Willard, D.E. 1973. Natural selection of parental ability to vary the sex ratio of offspring. Sci. 179: 90-92.
Wei, X.R., Wang, Z.Q., and Jiang, G.S. 2016. Key points of distinguishing male and female anus in chicks. Poult. Sci. 7: 30–32.
Yilmaz-Dikmen, B. and Dikmen, S. 2013. A morphometric method of sexing white layer eggs. Braz. J. Poultry sci. 15: 203-210.
© 2024 Anjana et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Anjana, P., Bhanja, S.K., Basil, H. and Shriram, A.G. 2024. Developing predictive models for sex determination
based on egg weight, length and width in White leghorn laying hens.
J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 55 (4):744-747