Is it true that chicks can be hatched without a shell?

Yesterday, I talked to you about "How to crack the shell of oviparous animals", in which I mentioned the sentence "Shell-less chicken embryos prove that shell pecking is not necessary". Some netizens are quite interested in this. Today, I want to talk to you about this technology. First of all, it is completely possible to hatch eggs directly without eggshells. It is currently a very mature technology . Let's talk about the development history of this technology and how to practice it.

01 History of Shell-less Chicken Cultivation

This idea was proposed in the 1960s.

1. In 1971, the late stage egg shell-less culture was completed.

2. Early egg shell-less culture was completed in 1984.

3. 1988 was a peak year, when Perry MM cultivated the 22 days of egg development in one go. Every day was in hatching mode, and all were successful.

In fact, this research has ended here. What follows is just tinkering , such as how to improve efficiency, how to improve operations. There are also practices that other countries like to imitate, such as the Japanese did it, the Chinese did it, and so on.

Important documents: Perry MM. A complete culture system for the chick embryo. Nature ,331: 70-72. 1988.

02How to hatch chicks without a shell?

How to hatch chicks without shells? There was a very popular video before, which was a replication. Of course, simple replication is definitely not enough, there must be something new. For example, a Japanese middle school student hatched a chick by cracking an egg in a cup and wrapping it in plastic wrap. How did they do it? Let me introduce it here.

The real picture looks like this

Among them, the eggs inside are without eggshells. The next step is incubation.

The incubation time is 21 days, including 2 days of pre-incubation and 18 days of artificial culture. Oxygen supply begins on the 18th day.

These variables are mainly used to measure the effects of different cultures. For example, the effect of pre-incubation time

The effect of oxygen (empty circles mean no oxygen is added, solid circles mean oxygen is added). Pure oxygen is used for supplementation, which shows that the effect of oxygen is crucial after 18 days of incubation outside the shell.

Finally they got the chick

OK, the article translation is complete.

That is, this paper repeats the history of previous incubations , demonstrating that incubation without eggshells is entirely feasible . At the same time, they also used new materials and studied the effects of calcium addition and oxygen.

03 Can this technique be tried at home?

However, it is not recommended for the majority of netizens to try it at home for the following reasons:

1. Most eggs sold in the market are unfertilized and cannot be incubated. Fertilized eggs are needed for incubation;

2. Key conditions for hatching eggs: temperature, humidity, air and pollution-free, which are not available in ordinary households;

3. The eggshell removal technology is not strong enough.

Attach the original text

Tahara Y, Obara K. A Novel Shell-less Culture System for Chick Embryos Using a Plastic Film as Culture Vessels[J]. The Journal of Poultry Science, 2014, 51(3): 307-312.