A new way to influence the sex of chickens was just patented and set to be released later this year.

Once Inc. found using specific applications of light can change whether a chick is male or female. According to its CEO Zdenko Grajcar, vertebrates have different strategies to determine this; in most mammals, it's through sex chromosomes, but in ovarian species genes have different paths it can take during development.

So they target genes with light, and can express them or knock them down, to make the egg go male or female.

The ability to control the sex of animals would help production for laying operations where female chickens are needer or broilers where male chickens are needed.

Before, without genetic modification or potentially harmful hormone injection, males and females were born at a 51 to 49 sex ratio.

Once Inc. is conducting large scale commercial trials and is expected to release the technology this year.