GREEN BAY — Packers receiver Jeff Janis was surfing the Internet recently when the expectant father came across an interesting idea for a baby's gender reveal.

It was a photo of a couple shooting an exploding canister with colored powder – blue for a boy and pink for a girl – to send out a smoke signal of what they were having.

Janis and his wife, Alyssa, are expecting their first child in April. The couple had been looking for a way to do a surprise reveal and decided to adopt the idea given their love of the outdoors.

After receiving the results in the mail, the couple took the envelope to the house of a friend, who then loaded the correct color into the canister for Janis to shoot.

Janis hit the target from roughly a football field away, causing blue smoke to billow out. In an instant, the couple was overjoyed to realize they were having a boy.

"We agreed that we were going to wait and have it be a surprise," Janis said. "They went in the garage and put the right color that we were going to use inside the box. Once I shot it, that's when we found out."

The couple had a photographer and videographer documenting the occasion. The Instagram video had more than 28,000 views through Friday evening.

"It was just something I thought would be kind of cool and it worked out pretty well," Janis said.