9 April 2025

2 minute read

By: TARGAN

Feather-sexing is gaining serious traction across North America and Europe as producers look to optimize feed programs, improve flock uniformity, and maximize processing yields. Once a manual, labor-intensive task, it’s now becoming a strategic advantage — with automation bringing new levels of speed, accuracy, and consistency.

Boire & Frères, a leader in the North American poultry industry with 160 barns across 59 sites, was one of the first hatcheries to adopt TARGAN’s WingScan, the industry’s first fully automated feather-sexing solution.

Before adopting TARGAN’s WingScan technology, Boire & Frères manually sexed 70,000 birds per hour. With the new system, it now processes 110,000 birds per hour, even without using the machine’s full capacity. This automation has significantly improved reliability while reducing labor challenges and ensuring consistency in operations.

Maximizing speed, accuracy, and chick welfare

The transition to automation not only expanded capacity but also made a measurable difference in delivery times. TARGAN’s WingScan has helped Boire & Frères speed up chick delivery by approximately two hours. This means its customers receive birds earlier, allowing the chicks to reach farms sooner and settle in with access to feed and water earlier, enhancing animal care.

The installation of WingScan was a major project, but it went smoothly for Boire & Frères, but with support from the TARGAN team, the hatchery quickly adapted. Only minor internal adjustments were needed to fine-tune pre and post-processing workflows, allowing WingScan to integrate efficiently into daily hatchery routines.

The timing of the rollout aligned with a growing need in the Quebec market, where sexing is becoming increasingly important for processing plants focused on accurate weight management. As industry trends evolve, precise identification is playing a larger role in helping producers meet performance targets and processing demands.

A smarter way forward

For hatcheries not yet sexing, automated feather-sexing enables producers to raise male and female birds separately, optimize feed strategies, and deliver more uniform flocks. This uniformity extends to processing, where equipment operates more efficiently — reducing waste and improving yields by minimizing size and weight variability that can disrupt plant calibration.

For those already manually feather-sexing, automation is more than a productivity boost — it’s a strategic investment in consistency, scale, and animal care. Fully automated systems like WingScan help producers meet growing demand by increasing throughput, improving accuracy, and ensuring reliable performance — all while alleviating labor shortages affecting the industry.

As demand for poultry protein rises, feather-sexing automation provides a competitive edge, enabling smarter, more efficient production.

For more information about WingScan, go to www.TARGAN.com/WingScan.