Those who have seen the "Chicken of Tomorrow" short on MST3K will perhaps find interesting resonances in this story about a retired chicken sexer.
Update: sorry, the link's gone all subscribers-only, so the tales of keeping fingernails exactly the right length to pry open newborn chicks' nether regions are lost to us.
I don't recall either "Chicken of Tomorrow" or the Atlantic piece mentioning the vast amounts of chick shit the sexing process involves (gotta clean out the cloaca, you know).