New Tech Can Save Billions of Dollars – and Stop Billions of Male Chicks from Death

A startup based in Israel has developed a new and noninvasive technology to identify male chickens in order to separate them before they hatch, thus preventing billions of unnecessary annual deaths, and saving billions of dollars.

“Universal adoption of our technology will transform the egg industry,” says Yehuda Elram, co-founder and CEO of EggXYt, the startup that uses the gene-editing technology CRISPR to put a small marker on the male chromosome.

Male chicks are not as useful for the egg industry as it is the female chicks who lay eggs. As a result, a total of $1 billion is wasted annually on the incubation of 4 billion male eggs, on manually sexing 8 billion chicks and the lost value of non-incubated male eggs. So EggXYt process, which happens before incubation, helps stop these death while saving these huge costs. The eggs go through a scanner that automatically identifies male ones since they possess the glowing marker. The male eggs are then separated and rerouted for other purposes, while female eggs are sent for incubation. Solve Innovation Future will invest in the startup to help them increase their research and development, and the commercialization of its product.