A brand new space

Vepymo has created a whole new area to house our Ella® machine in and boost their capacity. We’re about to kick off our egg sex determination game in the newly built, massive workspace. It’s a huge seal of approval for our technology and we’re more than excited to get started at Ella®’s new home. It’s the place where many, many ‘Girls Only’ chicks will soon be hatching.

It is way easier to just show you than to tell you. So we’ve added a time lapse down below that shows the process way better than we ever could describe in words.

Arrivé Ella®

Before we’ve put our machine on transport to Belgium, we had to make sure it was ready for its new adventure. This is done by a factory acceptance test: a quality test to validate the equipment. It makes sure the specifications and all other requirements have been met. After a confident “yes!”, we’ve put the components (including a candler, a sampler and a sorter) on transport.

The candler

Its primary goal is to swiftly and accurately identify infertile eggs or those with early embryonic deaths. By illuminating the eggshell and analysing what’s inside, it ensures that any eggs that will never be able to hatch, are detected with impeccable precision. These eggs are taken out of the process right away.

The sampler

It extracts a tiny drop from the allantoic fluid (which is a waste sac) of each egg. We run this sample through our MS machine to figure out the amount of our unique biomarker, which tells us whether the egg is male or female. This is information is passed on to the sorter, the next step in the process.

The sorter

The final piece of the puzzle, responsible for the ultimate goal of our machine – separating male and female eggs efficiently. It does so with remarkable speed and precision, reducing a lot of labour time. At the end of the line, the sorter provides us with two trays: one with male eggs and one with females. The females then immediately go back into the setter, the males are processed and turned into pet food by one of our partners.   

Once all the components had arrived in Poppel, a magical moment was waiting for us: taking the film of the machine and seeing its distinctive bright yellow. At the moment, we’re in the final stages of our checks and getting increasingly prepared for take off. Exciting!

The heart of the operations: mass spectrometry

The heart of the operations is the MS machine. MS stands for mass spectrometry, which is a technique that can be used to identify molecules. It’s a extremely sensitive instrument that can detect even the tiniest amount of molecule in a sample.

To capture your imagination, we’ve thought of a striking example that includes a cup of coffee. Ps, this is your moment to grab a cup of coffee if you don’t already have one 🙂

The coffee story

You walk into a room and encounter a freshly brewed cup of coffee. Your objective is to understand the coffee’s composition purely through your sense of smell. You sniff the coffee carefully and detect various scents like caramel, hints of cinnamon, and the deep aroma of roasted coffee beans.

While you can make educated guesses about the coffee’s aromas based on your sense of smell, some elements might elude your detection, and you might not pinpoint everything precisely.

A mass spectrometry machine acts like a scientific detective, but for molecules. Its role is to assist in identifying the individual components of a chemical mixture with extreme precision.

To start, you insert a sample into the machine, which dissects the molecules within the sample into ions and measures their mass-to-charge ratio. Similar to how you identify various components of coffee by recognising their distinct smells, the MS machine identifies the molecules in the sample by their unique mass-to-charge ratios.

Unlike our sense of smell, the MS machine can provide an exact chemical profile of the sample. It uncovers not only the prominent components but also the minor ones that might have gone unnoticed using other methods.

So, the mass spectrometry machine can be thought of as a highly advanced molecular detective, enabling scientists to reveal the mysteries of the chemical world, much like you uncover the aromas of that cup of coffee by smelling it.

For us, it determines with extreme precision what the amount of our biomarker is in the samples that are carefully taken from the eggs. 

Time to train

Ella® is almost ready to start analysing eggs. We’re covering all the bases and leave no stone unturned. With the last few tests, we make sure it’s up to speed and meets all the requirements. There is just one thing left to prepare: getting the team ready to work with Ella®!

We’re training our operators to work with the brand new Ella®. We not just train in Belgium but also at hatchery Het Anker, where our double-capacity Ella® is running at full speed.

If this sounds interesting, we have some good news. We’re currently looking for operators, engineers and technical people who get to know all the ins and outs of the machine while being at the forefront of improving animal welfare. You can read more about that on our jobs page.

In the starting blocks

We’re almost ready for take-off and hatch the first ‘Girls Only’ chicks at the new location. Exciting times. We’ll happily update you on the latest developments on our website, but you can also register to our newsletter and be among the first to stay updated.