Touching and Touching Again with Fingertips... The 'Chicken Industry' Dominated by This Korean [New Jobs]

Chick Sexing Expert
Korean Immigrant Occupation in 20th Century US
Essential for Broiler Farm Efficiency

As of last year, the global chicken meat production amounted to 102.74 million tons. A total of 789.12 million chickens were slaughtered. It is estimated that about 21 billion chickens are raised on farms, which is three times the human population. This is an enormous figure that helps gauge the amount of chicken meat consumed by humans annually.

The production efficiency of chicken meat significantly impacts numerous related industries such as food processing and the restaurant business. How efficiently chicken meat is produced and how many eggs are produced depend on how accurately the newly hatched 'chicks' can be sexed.

How efficiently chicken meat is produced and how many eggs are produced depend on how accurately the newly hatched "chicks" from eggs are identified.
[Image source=Getty Images]

Chick Sexing... Essential for Broiler Farms

The 'chick sexer' profession gained attention when it appeared as the job of the main couple in the 2021 film Minari. A chick sexer is a professional who inserts a finger into the anus of a newly hatched chick to check for a small protrusion, determining whether the chick is female or male.

Chick sexer. [Image source=Yonhap News]

Although it may seem simple, this task is by no means easy. The protrusion inside the chick’s anus is only about one-third the size of a millet seed. Moreover, the number of chicks hatched daily is enormous. Skilled sexers reportedly determine the sex of thousands to tens of thousands of chicks every day.

Why is chick sexing important? It is deeply connected to the chicken meat industry. Female and male chickens have different rearing periods. In particular, hens become 'layers' producing eggs after about six months, making them much more valuable than roosters. On the other hand, roosters finish their rearing period much faster and are sent to slaughterhouses sooner. To optimize broiler and egg production, accurate sexing at the chick stage is essential.

[Image source=Getty Images]

A Representative Livelihood for Korean Immigrants in the U.S.

There is a saying that chick sexing is a 'Korean job.' This is because Korean immigrants who first set foot in the United States most commonly found employment as chick sexers. Chick sexers must work tirelessly in dark sexing rooms to determine the sex of chicks. Even immediately after hatching, a small amount of excrement is present in the chick’s anus, so sexers have to endure unpleasant odors while continuing their work.

Newly hatched chicks [Image source=Yonhap News]

Koreans who moved to the U.S. are estimated to have worked as chick sexers since around the 1960s, and at one point, about 60% of chick sexers in American broiler farms were Korean. It is also reported that the father of director Lee Isaac Chung, who directed Minari, worked as a chick sexer while raising his son. This profession embodies both the hardships and hopes of past Koreans who had no choice but to leave their homeland.

Efforts to Replace with Machines

Recently, technologies to automate chick sexing with machines have been developed. A representative device involves inserting a small needle into the egg to collect a DNA sample, then using genomic analysis to determine the sex of the chick before hatching. Using such genomic analysis devices is more life-friendly since eggs destined to hatch male chicks do not need to be incubated.

However, the accuracy of chick sexing machines is not yet as perfect as that of humans. It is reported that the number of eggs discarded due to incorrect sex determination by machines is about 30-40% higher than when employing human chick sexers.

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