It’s a cruel statistic. Each year, U.S. companies will cull about 350 million male chicks shortly after they hatch, needing only the females to lay the nation’s 94 billion table eggs. The unwanted males are sent into the sharp knives of a high-speed macerator that kills them instantly — and humanely, says Bernie Beckman, a Hy-Line North America veterinarian. Nancy Roulston more bluntly calls it “a blender.” “But there’s a solution,” says Roulston, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ senior director of corporate policy and animal science. At Hy-Line’s hatchery in Wilton, Agri Advanced Technologies demonstrated for the first time in America a machine called the Cheggy, which uses imaging to determine a chick’s sex inside the egg before it hatches. Tap the link in our bio for more on this story. #Wilton #Iowa #eggs #agriculture