GRAPHIC PICS of my day learning to caponize

[binders]

Thanks Kassaundra for posting these pictures. I've been looking forward to hearing about your experience. I think this is a fasinating process but don't know if I'd be brave enough to do it. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Maggiesdad]

Good luck MD. Still got my capon...he's over 10lbs now. Is you BA still among the living??

Yeah - he got a reprieve for the time being. I knew Hapless was coming, and I wanted Tony to see how fat and sassy he was. He (the capon) is a short timer now, though...

Good luck today. Wonderful that your are mentoring Hapless Runner.

Thank you - it's the least I can do, considering how helpful Kass and Poco have been... my dad used to say "Don't repay kindness, pass it on!"


Well, I was rusty, and my hands were shaky on the first two. Funny how that goes... had to remember how to get in my 'business' frame of mind.
We did five, took a break for lunch then came back and did four more. I kept back two since I recently lost my backup BCM cock and these boys were sired by him.

Only one, about midway through the bunch, was a bleeder, and he left the table pale and droopy. But 20min back in the cage and he was back up and moving around again. Everybody else did great. The Chinese retractor works like a champ, really minimizes bleeding around the incision compared to my old retractor. We reread Poco's post on the thread tool, but didn't get up enough nerve to try that.
A couple of the cockerels had one black teste, that threw us off for a moment but we got it figured out. Hapless was a natural, patient and steady handed. It was cool to be able to hang out with someone who could talk chickens all day - most folks I know get that glazed look after about 10 minutes of me talking chickens...

 

[RogerShoaf]

just in processing I have noticed the ones with bad attitudes have the biggest....

I think it might be interesting to compare the size and weight of his brain to his testicles.

 

[MargaretYakoda]

Today I worked on some seven week old chicks.
I'm getting better each time I try this! Still too slow, but faster than I had been. Last year when we first tried caponizing, neither one of us could get past cutting the skin without freaking out and quitting. Today I got two full capons and three half capons. I also think I got a pollard done properly. Time will tell on that little one. This is a bunch of mixed parentage mutts, but the pollard looked exactly like another chick who turned out to be a cockerel (now full capon).

My hands don't shake anymore. When a chick has a little freak out I remain calm. AND I think I've finally worked out a restraint system that works pretty well.

 

[AllynTal]

In agriculture, a castrated bull is a steer, a castrated goat is a wether, a castrated pig is a barrow, and a castrated cockerel is a capon. These farm animals are castrated to improve meat quality. We (farmers) raise these farm animals for human consumption. Capons, raised on pasture and prepared with soaked corn, milk, yogurt, and fresh fruits and vegetables before slaughter are highly nutritious and delicious. If the local market sold meat from a bull, billy, boar, or rooster, customers would bring it back complaining that it was too tough and stringy to eat. Many would complain that the meat has a strong, unpleasant flavor.

I can't follow your bullfighting analogy. Where is the similarity or comparability of the two topics? Caponizing is a farming practice, and the objective is to end with a live chicken. Caponizing is common practice in China and the UK. The practice is being revived here in the United States.

Bullfighting is a blood sport, or an art form, depending on which side you choose. If the first matador is not able to kill the bull, a second matador will enter the ring and finish the job. After the bullfight, the bull is butchered and sold in the market, but he's not going to be nearly as tender as a steer. It's admirable that he's used as food, but the spectacle, the ceremonious battle between man and beast, is what brings people to see a bullfight. One must travel out of the United States to see a bullfight. Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador still have bullfighting. There are probably other places.

The pain experienced by a chicken during caponizing (a master can do the work in eight seconds) can't be compared or equated to the twenty or thirty minutes of physical pain the bull experiences. Pica cut the muscles of the neck, and then as many as six banderillas are used. The kill may take several minutes as the matador may not pierce the heart on the first thrust. The bull dies in the end; this is the expected outcome.

Too many people don't know, or don't want to know, where their food comes from. Some of us want to eat food that isn't pumped full of steroids, hormones, and antibiotics.

If there were a way I could give you a bunch of thumbs up, I would.

Quote:

Yes and if I wanted a pet Roo I would take it to the vet, just because people want bigger meat birds doesn't justify the pain. People still justify Bull fighting too!

Anesthesia is dangerous for birds. Giving a bird anesthesia is putting it in more danger than a quick procedure that lasts less than a minute -- less than 30 seconds if the person doing it is proficient. Do you think that is mean? Watch a video of how the chickens, cows and pigs are treated in the big commercial production farms that supply the meat to your grocery store. Talk about inhumane treatment. If you want to take on a cause to help animals, go get on the bandwagon to stop that kind of treatment.

Folks seem to think that because we have "meat birds" that caponizing is an unnecessary evil. What they don't realize is that capon meat is a much better meat, both nutritionally and in taste, than a meat bird such as a CornishX. Saying that we have meat birds like CornishX so we don't need to caponize is like saying that because we have Honda Civics, there's no need for Lexus or Mercedes. Some people want the higher quality, better tasting meat. Part of the reason caponizing fell out of fashion here is that our food production has been centralized and the large commercial farms can't caponize economically. If it cuts into their profit margin, they don't do it. Processing large quantities of meat birds makes that meat inexpensive. The majority of families want inexpensive meat, so everyone got used to 'settling' for the Civic. Capons were the special treat at Christmas dinner, but that also went by the wayside with large production turkey processing.

We routinely castrate farm animals for better quality meat. Chickens are no different; the process is just a little more complicated. It is a viable option for chicken owners who want a sustainable flock when we might have a dozen or more cockerels every year that we need to deal with -- either kill them early and have a small stewing bird or caponize them now, let them have a nice chicken life, and then we have a feast later on a rich, succulent, tasty bird. Capons have also been useful as surrogate broodies, so they get to raise chicks while the laying hens keep laying.

Sometimes meat animals have to endure a little pain. They get branded or tagged for identification, they get castrated, they get vaccination injections, et al. It's a moment of pain for a greater good and a better life for the animal. We, as the owners of these animals, do the procedures in the best way we can to minimize the pain because we have a lot invested in these animals and their well-being is vital to our purpose. We want them to have as good a life as possible and when the time comes to harvest that animal for the table, we want the end to be as quick and humane as possible. We want happy meat, not the meat raised in the awful, atrocious conditions that exist at the big commercial production farms.

 

[Kabootar]

Happy New Year, everyone! Hullo, Kabootar!

Hey CindyinSD!!! When I first joined BYC I was amazed how fellow members were dealing with the extra cockerels that they hatched or were 'gifted' by the hatcheries. I used to wonder "why are they not caponizing their cockerels?"

I hope you have read all the posts in this thread. I learnt this skill from my father and I have caponized so many cockerels over these years and I can tell you that you are never gonna find a more comprehensive piece of literature on this topic. There's nothing that I can add.

 

[CindyinSD]

My 14 experimental mixed breed chicks (some of them) hatched a couple of days ago. Yay! Soon...

Avg weight taken from 5 randomly chosen chicks is 1.22 oz, so they have a ways to go to get to 1-2 lbs. but at least they’re out of their shells.

 

[Kabootar]

Thanks so much for your advice, Kabootar. It means so much to have an experienced person like yourself to give council and encouragement. I have a bunch of 3.5 week old chicks (hopefully more boys this time) growing out now, that I want to caponize. They'll all or nearly all be rose-comb too, because the cock who sired them is. Good for cold winters here--not so much for sexing chicks, alas.

All the juveniles I worked on yesterday are back home with their flock, so hopefully the one with the detached teste floating around won't suffer from it. Next time (though hopefully I won't be so clumsy again) I'll not be so timid and will look harder/longer to find it. How long would you spend searching before you stopped? I was afraid I would cause him more stress than he could tolerate.

Please don't stress yourself. You are doing a really fine job. You caponized 5 cockerels and didn't kill any. I don't have that record.
The first day my father forced me to learn (tbh he didn't force me, I was just pressured into it, a subtle differences), I had 10 cockerels. 6 were slips and three died. We ate the dead one for the dinner.

I have never had a cockerel die because of stress, they only died because I snipped the artery. I really can't say how much time it takes to fish the testicles from the body cavity, because under those circumstances I really lose the sense of time, but my father told me never to leave it inside. In case it dies, we can atleast eat it right away.

Frankly in most places chickens are just chickens, a cheap and spendable livestock. I understand however that in the States backyard chicken people are different and I respect them.

 

[Poco Pollo]

Great pics, OP! I am getting some roos from a hatch of a dozen of American Bresse and I can only keep one intact. So I plan to pull the feathers off, mark the incision spot, put the bird into the CO2 chamber made with two boxes linked by tubing an release the vinegar and baking soda to produce CO2. Once the bird is drowsy, remove from the chamber, disinfect the area, sterile dress, lay out my surgical instruments, check incision site, cut into the bird, use the wound stretcher to hold open the incision into muscle, locate the testes...if I've kept the birds off feed for 3 days, should be easier to locate with bright headlamp, then i plan to inject the testicle with a 20% saline solution instead of surgically removing them because it has been used in Veterinary medicine to cause testes to become necrotic and stop producing sperm with fewer sequelae/complications that cutting out tissue. Then I intend to put butterfly "suture" bandages to close the wound, disinfect one last time with Chlorehexidine and keep the bird in a quiet spot for at least a week. Will report back on my progress.

. Anesthesia is rough for chickens. Chickens have a series of interconnected air sacks, so the process of respiration for chickens is much different from mammals. At the start of this post, I put a link to a short (2 min) video of a man caponizing cockerels. Watch what he does. You don’t see the prep, but his birds were fasted before he began work. Proper fasting before caponizing and then correct positioning and stretching of the bird, one quick incision in the correct place (the intercostal space between the last two ribs), and complete removal of the testicles by cutting the vas deference attached to each testicle is the best way to create capons. If you want further information, please contact me through my website. My contact page is working but my retail pages aren’t finished. MousePotatoFarm.com. I’ve been caponizing birds for about ten years, and I don’t think reinventing the procedure is good for you or your birds. Reduce stress and trauma for the bird by practicing on cadavers first. Learn the anatomy before you start to work on live birds. Study the procedures practiced in China. They have schools, much like our tech schools, where people pay to attend and learn how to caponize as a career.

 

[qajaqkelly]

Thanks for the encouragement. I am far from giving up. I did loose one of the Barred Rock 6.5 week olds overnight, but I will continue until I am proficient. This fits me well, as most all my interests revolve around nearly lost skills and trying to recapture them. I received a PM suggesting I not give up on Black Australorps as he said he has a friend that caponizes 100's of them a year for an Asian market. 40% of my young cockerels are Black Australorp so I will keep on trying with them.

This is almost a lost skill, relegated to history by our sterile society which is content to consume cardboard tasting manufactured food in the interest of being politically correct and "civilized", only so they can keep their own hands clean of the matter. Eating industrially produced Cornish X chicken purchased in a store only makes them "feel" better, but they truly are part and parcel of the cruelty that is inherent to that industry. Off my soapbox now.