Ella® is developed in close cooperation with hatcheries to have minimal impact on existing hatchery processes. Ella® works in-line and the sample analysis is done in less than a second, so the sorted eggs can go back to the setter quickly after sampling. Ella® does change operations at a hatchery but integrating the machine and switching to cull-free has proven to be a smooth transition.
Ella® determines the sex of a chick while it’s still in the egg and allows only female chicks to hatch. Because the male eggs are taken out of incubation at day-9 of development, this frees up incubation capacity, giving hatcheries the choice to either use fewer incubators or hatch more female chicks.
