Sterilizing a chicken

[pipermark]

The answer to this is pretty simple. Pick the right breed. I have chickens for three to 4 years and have had only one hen ever go broody.

Production Reds
Red Sex links
Production Welsumers.


You want breeds that were developed for egg laying. These are breeds that the urge to sit on the eggs have been bred out. Now before people start posting, "well I had a such and such and she was broody all the dang time" there are always exceptions to any rule.

Pick the breed correctly and chances are the only way you will have eggs is if you incubate them yourself.

 

[SpottedCrow]

I sincerely hope your vet has practiced before doing this operation on your bird, ChickBea...

 

[chickbea]

SpottedCrow - Now I'm even more nervous! She has done some, but doesn't like to...
The only homes I can find for this little guy could see him ending up in the stew pot eventually. I don't know what to do, and he's getting older all the time!

 

[4H kids and mom]

Readng this, I have a question: Is it true that caponized roos dont live as long, sometimes leading VERY short lives? I heard that somewhere and wanted to get an oppinion on it since thats what your all talkin about! Thanks!

 

[SpottedCrow]

ChickBea,
I was discussing this with my son just yesterday...The place where I took my baby was a family farm/petting zoo and I thought it was going to be his forever home...but I found out just last year that they only kept him for a year and shuffled him off to someplace else...talk about a broken heart!

I feel like I failed Jerry.
Where you are can you have roos? I couldn't.
If you can keep the roo legally and without the neighbours kvetching, then I'd leave him alone.

4H, Caponization is more for a table bird than a backyard pet...It's not that they'll die sooner, but that they're gonna be food sooner. The really shortlived birds are your meatbirds, your Cornish-Rock crosses. They grow faster in order to be butchered by only a few months old. Caponizing a roo is quite similar to having your dog fixed, except it's internal...

 

[chickbea]

I can have roos where I live, but I don't like the noise! I live in a very narrow mountain valley, and noise can really travel. I used to have a hen who screeched at the top of her lungs every time she laid an egg. You could hear her for about a half a mile or more!

 

[Arodue]

Please forgive my extreme ignorance. I was not wanting to post this question for fear of looking like a complete idiot but what the heck Ill do it anyways.

I have had chickens on and off but they were always in an uncaged area and we rarely got the eggs because the chickens always hid their nest in thickets and so on.

We had one egg hatch but I assume the cats got the baby because after a week the bay was missing.

Now that we own this place and land we are planning on making a small chicken shed with a somewhat large fenced in area for the chickens protection and so we can have a few babies without them getting killed off.

But I dont want tons of baby chics because I just fall in love with my pets and can not stand to get rid of them so I am the type that would end up with 500 chickens real fast because I could not get rid of them. And I certainly could not butcher them.

But I want a male chicken because I like the crowing. I miss that.

SO Im wanting to know does Vets ( or whomever) ever sterilize chickens?

We want to eat their eggs so we want for them to still lay eggs but we just dont want for them to be making tons of babies.

I know how male chickens will sometimes fight eachother to the death if they are in the same contained area so I dont want to end up with all those male chicks either.

So do chickens get fixed?

Thank you, Im so glad I found this forum because now that Im getting back into having chickens I want to do it right this time and already today I have learned alot from this forum.

Ummm, don't let your hens sit? Take her eggs, problem solved.