I've thought about that, and in short, the problem would be acquiring the data in the first place. In the fully automated case, a machine would have to pick up

I've thought about that, and in short, the problem would be acquiring the data in the first place. In the fully automated case, a machine would have to pick up the chick, turn it the right way, pop the vent, and release it, all without killing it. A rather complicated task for robotics, and this could get very error prone or very maintenance intensive. Next way would be to have a Human put the chick over a scanner in the right orientation. This solution is less attractive, because you still need to pay a worker, and that worker would only have to learn the sexing skill for a few weeks to be equally as fast as the machine...