Trieurs d'oeufs

🔍 Interest of Egg Sorters in Aquaculture

1. Improved Survival Rate:
   By separating fertile eggs from non-viable ones (dead, sterile, or damaged), egg sorters help reduce contamination by fungi or bacteria, which could spread to all eggs during incubation.

2. Optimized Incubation:
   By keeping only healthy and viable eggs, the efficiency of incubators is maximized, improving the overall yield of hatcheries.

3. Time and Labor Savings:
   Manual egg sorting is time-consuming, tedious, and unreliable at large scales. Automated sorters increase speed, precision, and reduce the need for human intervention.

4. Quality Control and Traceability:
   Some sorting systems allow data recording on egg batches, facilitating health monitoring and breeder selection.

⚙️ Functioning of Egg Sorters

Egg sorters can operate based on different principles, but here are the most common technologies:

1. Optical / Vision Sorting

   • Principle: A camera or optical sensor inspects each egg individually.

   • Evaluation Criteria: color, transparency, presence of an embryo, size, shape.

   • Advantages: highly precise, fast, ability to sort by multiple classes.

2. Floatability Sorting

   • Principle: Eggs are immersed in a solution with a specific density. Viable eggs sink (denser), while dead eggs float.

   • Advantages: simple and effective method, often used as a pre-sorting step before optical sorting.

3. Mechanical Sorting (less common for fragile eggs)

   • Principle: Sorting by size or weight using grids, sieves, or rollers.

   • Usage: sometimes used to separate eggs of different species or sizes.

🧪 Example of Use in a Trout Hatchery

1. Collection of fertilized eggs after controlled reproduction.

2. Early incubation for a few days to allow non-fertilized or dead eggs to be visually differentiated.

3. Passing through the optical sorter, which eliminates white (dead) eggs and keeps translucent (viable) eggs.

4. Storage of sorted eggs in water-controlled incubators.