Job title: Chicken sexer
Salary: £40,000 per annum
Hours of work: 12 hours a day
Job description: Stare at chicks’ backsides
Despite the generous salary, nobody wants this job.
The UK’s poultry industry is struggling to get people to determine the sex of newly-hatched chicks, and it could hit exports.
It actually takes three years to learn the tiny differences between male and female chicks and then you’re expected to determine the sex within three to five seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8ODNFSkSak
That’s between 800 and ,1,200 chicks a day – plus you’re expected to have a 97-98 per cent accuracy.
Andrew Large, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, told The Times: ‘It takes three years to train someone so they develop the sensitivity and dexterity to reliably sex the bird and a lot of people don’t want to spend that amount of training.
‘I think the problem is the job itself. You are spending hours every day staring at the backside of a chick. That is not seen as being attractive.
‘In southeast Asia a chick sexer is a high status job. In the UK it is more likely to be the butt of humour.’
Source
Would you do this job?