Hi @Acre4Me! Oh my. Sounds like you've been through a lot. I'm making lots of capons here, and since I retired from teaching high school, I wanted to find a way to keep teaching. Yeah...teaching is a congenital defect. Now I have adults in my classes, but not everyone has the same level of...
Here's a link to a page with more links. It will take you to a document with a brief explanation of each class and links to the registration forms for both classes. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1otHfT8yb76Nl7bx9-rvTH0-Ho-GKXU44vXIXy0KDEto/edit?usp=sharing
Greetings to all interested in learning to caponize and those seeking more information regarding this lost agricultural art. I have over ten years of caponizing experience and am now teaching others how to caponize cockerels. I use Zoom classes, videos, and written instruction. The photo...
Provided my hens produce, I'll be setting chicken eggs for the Easter Hatch Along. Not sure what breed(s) yet. This will be fun to compare and contrast as the eggs develop.
Chickens
21
March 13
Thank you!. I understand being busy. It's been hectic here, and I've been overwhelmed keeping animals fed and watered with extreme winter weather. Three days of sleet, then nearly a foot of snow in some areas, and then no water at all because of broken water pipes once the snow melted. It's...
Folks interested in ordering new Chinese capon tools have five days to complete the group order form (link below). I recommend these tools because they work.
I know that there are some folks still using this thread. If you want to get tools from China, I have a contact. I generally order...
I'm getting questions about shipping. Since the tools are coming from China, I've got to pay to get them here. I will figure the % of international shipping for each order based on how much the order weighs. The domestic shipping will be as low as I can make it. I will use a small flat rate...
I know that there are some folks still using this thread. If you want to get tools from China, I have a contact. I generally order twice a year.
My next group order for capon tools from China will be emailed to my guy in China on February 25th. The Chinese New Year celebration will prevent me...
I didn't realize this thread was still active. I haven't been on for ages. We're south of Haskell and west of Muskogee. I have juveniles (Delawares and White Wyandottes) that were moved to a coop and run just before the bad weather. They stood in the rain yesterday and gawked. They didn't...
@Ningauble3020 - Have you considered raising the males until they are at butcher weight without caponizing them? They will be ready for the table at 4 months - feed milk-soaked grain (many people prefer corn) for two weeks prior to butchering. To improve the marbled meat, confine your birds to...
If one is euthanizing 20,000 broiler chickens simultaneously, then gassing the facility makes sense. The rest of your plan... I suggest you study and practice first.
. 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...
Thanks, @CindyinSD. I wasn’t precise in my wording. The technical term for the space between two ribs is “intercostal.” The incision should be made in the intercostal space between the last rib (at the bird’s tail end) and the next-to-the-last rib. On some birds, there is an indentation...
I’m happy to help. Having the bird sufficiently stretched will place the second-to-the-last rib above the abdominal air cavity. A bird tied loosely to the table will result in the second-to-the-last rib resting over the thoracic air sack. Some breeds are shorter in the body/chest and should...
Chickens have a respiratory system dependent on multiple air sacks. Their lungs are fixed (do not expand or contract). If you break through into the forward air sack, you compromise the chicken’s ability to inhale and exhale: this leads to gasping and ultimately, expiring. Chickens have nine...
I've never used capons as brooders, but it sounds like it would work. I learned to caponize because I did not enjoy my experiences with fast broilers (Cornish cross). Let them go a day past eight weeks and they implode. My husband called them zombie chickens because they never seemed fully...