Anybody on here ever heard of Caponizing ?

The only difference in "caponizing" a rooster, and the castration of any other farm animal, is that a roosters testicles are inside his body, and you have to cut him to do it. It is a small inscision, and like one of the previous posters mentioned, if you wipe with a disenfectant, complications are usually minimal. The poster mentioned the farm family that would only lose 1-5 of 100 birds.

But Miss Prissy is correct when she said that someone who did not know what they were doing, should probably not try.

For the most part, when pigs are castrated, their scrotum is slit, and the testicles are ripped out. No anesthesia. Not many people are going to invest the money to have a vet do this.

I'm not sure of the correct terminology ( My wife is the expert on these things) but they use some type of clamping device on cows, that crush the blood vessels to the testicles, and they do not develop. This too is painful.

Other than the inscision in the body, I do not see how castrating a rooster is any more "cruel" than castrating any other food animal. It is not a pleasant experience for any of them, but it does pass.
 
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Hi..i respect your opinion also...i dont want to argue on this..
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...but...it is also very cruel how they do farm pigs!....
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Hi..i respect your opinion also...i dont want to argue on this..
frow.gif
...but...it is also very cruel how they do farm pigs!....
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And I respect your opinion also!!! I was attempting to make the point that it was no more or less so when it is a rooster. It is unneccesary for chickens, but we all know what happens to all of those extra roos at the hatcheries. That's not exactly fair,or nice either. But, unfortunately with cows and pigs it is necessary if they are to be used for meat.
 
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If bulls or Pigs were not castrated, you wouldn't be able to eat the meat and the smell would be AWFUL. You can see how to caponize fowl online and they used to advocate caponizing roosters when I was in high school Future Farmers of America. Now I think it is a lost art because all the large chicken farms don't keep roosters. Capons grow HUGE compared to a regular rooster. Capon meat used to be a delicacy but I haven't seen anyone with Capon meat or any store advertise capon meat in years.
 
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We ate capons when I was growing up. I have cooked one or two in my lifetime, but not in a long time. I am pretty sure I have seen them at the grocery store in recent years, though.

I was just about to ask my vet about castrating my roosters. I wonder why they would charge so much.... seems ridiculous to me to charge upwards of $500 for this surgery, even if they do have to go in for the testes. They have to go in for a cat's uterus and ovaries, but I never heard of a $500 cat spay.
I was going to ask (since this thread is already going) if anyone knows if it changes their appearance. I like their looks, I just hate their behavior. I mean do they loose their 'rooster feathers'?
 
I've had the honor of seeing 2 hens spayed (under anesthesia) I hate the idea of castrating any animal with out some form of pain medication. I have basically no knowledge of the farming lifestyle so I do speak out of ignorance but OUCH!
 
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We ate capons when I was growing up. I have cooked one or two in my lifetime, but not in a long time. I am pretty sure I have seen them at the grocery store in recent years, though.

I was just about to ask my vet about castrating my roosters. I wonder why they would charge so much.... seems ridiculous to me to charge upwards of $500 for this surgery, even if they do have to go in for the testes. They have to go in for a cat's uterus and ovaries, but I never heard of a $500 cat spay.
I was going to ask (since this thread is already going) if anyone knows if it changes their appearance. I like their looks, I just hate their behavior. I mean do they loose their 'rooster feathers'?

Usually the cost id because it is an exotic and they can...but also the anesthesia that is used to safely do surgery on a bird is pricey (but not that expensive)

IMHO you shouldn't go to a vet that doesn't already use those anesthetics anyway regardless of the animal. (Isoflourane that is)
 
My folks always raised Capons when I was growing up, this was about 25 yrs ago , We got them in april, processed them usually around end of oct, and most birds would dress out around 13 lbs and they were delish

Now the Roo thing, I think the loss of their parts causes massive confusion, these guys would half crow (weird sounding crows) all day.

When I got into raising chickens I looked into getting Capons, didn't realize you could not get them, that you have to DIY, I'm not so tough after all
 
When I was a kid, my mom took care of the laying hens, and my dad took care of the meat birds. Twice a year he would get a couple of hundred male chicks from a local egg farm. They were a penny a piece as I recall.

When they were three or four weeks old, some old Italian guy would show up and him and my dad would "fix the chickens."

My mom would never let us help them, because "it is not nice" and also because the Italian guy was a drinker and a nasty talker.

So, I never learned how to do this procedure. But I can say that it produced a delicious bird.

For what it is worth, I read in the internet that this procedure is illegal in the United Kingdom.

Rufus
 
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To quote from a nearly 100 year old ICS text. "A capon's comb, wattles, and spurs, unlike those of a cockerel, never develop; a capon seldom crows or molts; but, on the other hand, the plumage of a well-fed capon is as brilliant as that of a cockerel. The head of a capon has a distinctive appearance of its own, being unlike that of either a cock or a hen."

As far as altering an already mature roo, I wouldn't expect it to change his appearance much if at all.
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