Chicken sexers in Japan once enjoyed well-paid careers with overseas travel and job security but industry changes mean their expertise is not needed so widely and less people are seeking to join the profession. Skip related content

Chicken sexing -- or determining the sex of chickens -- is critical to lower costs as farmers need to know the sex of newly hatched chicks to match them to their next destination. Females are kept to lay eggs while a few males are retained for meat.

Chicken sexers can manually sort poultry at a speed of 8,000 chicks per day and 99.7 percent accuracy by learning to identify the external appearance of the birds' sexual organs that are located within their bodies.

Most experts in so-called "vent" or "cloaca" sexing come from Japan, where the method of distinguishing patterns of birds' sexual organs at one day-old was invented in 1933 and helped revolutionise the poultry business, with Japanese sexers in demand internationally for their skills.

But as Japan's youth migrates to cities, fewer people want the job.

"I just got two emails from Denmark and Hungary asking to send over Japanese experts but I have nobody at hand," said Atsushi Nodera from Japan Livestock Technology Association, a sexer with over 30 years experience.

"Young people now want a degree and to become a doctor. The effect is that we have plenty of jobless doctors and no one to carry on our profession," added Nodera who spent 10 years in Spain and Germany working as a chick sexer.

But the poultry industry is also changing, with chicken imports eroding the need for sexers at some Japanese hatcheries.

The demand for Japanese experts internationally is also on the decline with more breeders using chickens bred with feathers that are longer on females and so easier to identify, a technique called feather sexing.

This has led to a fall in the number of chicken sexers being trained in Japan which once boasted a workforce of more than 1,000 sexers but now only has a few hundred.

The only permanent Chick Sexing School that exists internationally, run each year by the Zen Nippon school in Nagoya, central Japan, has struggled to attract students, with only three finishing this year.

"There was 30 of us when I went there in 1967. It's a shame young people don't want to take up a sexing career -- a breeder can pay you as much as 8 yen (90 U.S. cents) per hatchling," said Nodera.

This can lead to earnings of about 1,260,000 yen ($15,000) a month with the added bonus of overseas contracts.

But to achieve close to 100 percent accuracy and near the world record speed of some 3 seconds per hatchling requires long hours of training and only a few end up with such skills.

"Years of desire to be a 100 percent accurate in my work required discipline, practice, practice, focussing and the trusting of my intuition," said former chick sexer and poultry farmer Bob Martin, author of the book "The Specialist Chick Sexer."

Martin also wrote how the discipline needed to be a good chick sexer was almost addictive as it required full concentration for hours on end with a steady hand and good eye.

Nodera laments the decline in the interest and demand for experienced chicken sexers whose skill has been compared to that in playing chess or other games involving pattern recognition.

"When I lived in Spain, I often went to admire Gaudi and Picasso," said Nodera. "Not because I love modern art -- I would go there time and again in search for the stroke of genius."

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This can lead to earnings of about 1,260,000 yen ($15,000) a month with the added bonus of overseas contracts.

thats a nice wage

This can lead to earnings of about 1,260,000 yen ($15,000) a month with the added bonus of overseas contracts.

thats a nice wage

That's a very nice wage.

And it is a very skilled job, one of the ex-pats here ordered 30 chicks a few month back, he asked for all females, what he got was 30 males... that was no accident.

No wonder the price of chicken has come down in the last decades......must be due to feather sexing.

But I do wonder about what qualities in the meat were sacrificed genetically for the sake of being able to sex the chicks cheaply.

The other chicken related art that may be dying out is caponising. I think it's illegal in many countries, so nobody practices it any more.....plus the hormone-enhanced, genetically-selected chooks that are produced to be big and fat in a short time has meant that capons are not so sought after.

I would like to know how to caponise....I think there is a market for it.

You have to be very short or have virtually no legs to be a successful chicken sexer

Edited to add or a champion limbo dancer

The other chicken related art that may be dying out is caponising. I think it's illegal in many countries, so nobody practices it any more.....plus the hormone-enhanced, genetically-selected chooks that are produced to be big and fat in a short time has meant that capons are not so sought after.

I would like to know how to caponise....I think there is a market for it.

Adam West was the first person caponised on TV

Strange. I'm somewhat of an authority on chicken feathers (fly tying), but that occupation never even occured to me.

Strange. I'm somewhat of an authority on chicken feathers (fly tying), but that occupation never even occured to me.

And here's me thinking that you would have considered anything if the word "sex" was in the title.

40 odd years ago, capons were the prime poultry for eating.

Never see them now, poor cockerels.

If they are castrated, no balls, obviously it is not done now,

If you check out "the parson's nose", you will see the testes still there.

Time marches on, progress.

Now there was me thinking a priests nose was closer to little balls than a parson's................... Or so I've heard

Well, some of our roosters are rather large. That is what happens when you start introducing chemicals into the feed and playing around with genetics

Can you imagine, get all dressed up etc. to go out for the night. Get groovy with some young lady. And the conversation goes to "what do you do for a living?" I'm a secretary, and you?

Can you imagine, get all dressed up etc. to go out for the night. Get groovy with some young lady. And the conversation goes to "what do you do for a living?" I'm a secretary, and you?

:lol:

Too true.

As a student at an agricultural college many years ago, I worked weekends for a chicken farmer who was also a chicken sexer, interesting to watch him at work with his little telescope with an inbuilt light, he'd stick it up the bums cloaca of these little day old chicks to look for the ovaries or whatever else was up there, boys went in 1 box, girls in the other. I tried it a few times myself but couldn't tell the difference. Didn't feel inclined to make a career of it either.