Caponize..... why??

[ashyannehand]

I am thinking about getting some meat birds and was a a hatchery site reading up on the Jumbo Cornish X Rock. This is a statment that they made. I would like to know why you would do this to a meat bird.

"If you want to raise capons, buy males and have them caponized at 2 or 3 weeks of age."

And they have them seperated into males and female or straight run. Besides the males grow a little faster, what is the advantage of one sex or the other for meat birds?

Can you raise your own from these birds, say keep out 10 pulletts and one roo for bredding the next generation of dinners?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[purr]

I don't know but maybe they get even bigger?

 

[skirbo]

I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that 'capons' are neutered - therefore I would think 'caponized' means having them neutered.

I'm a newbie though, so don't quote me on that.

Sarah

 

[greyfields]

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There's no reason to caponize Cornish Crosses. They will grow larger than traditional capons before reaching full sexual maturity. It's a complete waste to do this and puts the bird's life in peril for no good reason.

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There's little reason to not do a straight run. You can hardly tell the sexes apart when they reach processing sizes.

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No. Cornish Crosses are hybrids. If you breed them together, you do not get another Cornish Cross.

 

[PortageGirl]

Yep, a capon is a castrated rooster... it leaves them calmer, more mellow, and their meat is generally more tender and juicy than an intact rooster because it's less dense and muscular etc... it developes without those rascally hormones. Thing is, if you get modern meat breeds, they are engineered to mature quicker and so have fewer hormones involved anyway.

It might be a good idea if you have a abundance of dual purpose roos, that you want to keep to raise for your freezer, but if you buy meat birds from a modern hatchery, probably not worth the trouble. You can learn to do it yourself, it's not TOO difficult I'm told.

[edit - I used to work for a vet, so I'm not just blowing smoke, but greyfields has good points about it being a bit of a risk if not really prepared to do it - it was quite a few years ago that I worked for this guy (I think he's dead now!) but he told me that it's not much more difficult than releaving a crop-bound bird, easy for a veteranarian to say too though!]

 

[mikarod]

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We've done it...with the right preparations...it's easy as pie!

 

[ashyannehand]

Thanks for all the replies. I was not sure if it was something that was done for a good reason or not and if there was a reason not just to get a straight run.

Thanks again!

 

[dancingbear]

Since the meat birds are butchered at about 8 weeks old, well before they reach sexual maturity, there's no point in doing this. Caponizing won't make much difference, if any, though, because testes in birds that young aren't secreting much, if anything.

If you caponize a dual purp breed, they'll get bigger and be more tender, but probably not faster.

Plus meat breeds already grow so fast that it impairs their health. If you were able to make them grow faster, they'd probably drop dead before butcher age.

 

[greyfields]

Caponization would actually make them grow slower as they wouldn't have teh testosterone. It's more an issue like you said, they grow fatter and more docile when caponized.

This is why we sometimes don't band bull calves until they're 4 months old or so. The added growth from having the bollocks is significant when compared side-by-side with a bull calf banded at birth.