The young hatchlings are usually condemned to a violent end simply because they are male, as roosters are deemed largely useless in the world of livestock farming.
Not only are they unable to lay eggs, their meat is not particularly popular.
Male chicks are therefore systematically eradicated. In many cases, they are mechanically shredded or crushed to death and used as animal feed.
At Dresden's University Clinic, analytical chemist Gerald Steiner and his team are working to prevent such mass culls of newborns by detecting the sex of chicks before they hatch.
Steiner uses a spectroscopic method, based on the analysis of scattered light on blood vessels, to determine the sex of chick embryos in the egg.
Spectroscopy is already used in cancer treatment as it helps to differentiate between abnormal and healthy cells.
"If we are able to identify a tumour, then why not the sex?" said Roberta Galli, a physicist.
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