Caponize roo to keep as pet

[BuffOrp82]

Hey all,

I have an 8 week old buff Orpington who was supposed to be a girl but it's looking more and more like a roo .. anyone ever have a good experience caponizing a roo? They are pets at this point and I did not want any Roos but I'm attached and can't find him a good home, so if I want to keep him he needs to be "fixed" .. I'm not worried about him crowing and he gets along fine with the other girls and hasn't shown any sign of being overly aggressive yet but we just don't want any fertilized eggs.

If anyone knows a vet in the ohio area who would do it please let me know, I've called around with no luck so far ..

 

[bobbi-j]

Any reason in particular that you don't want fertilized eggs? I don't know if a caponized rooster would be quite as diligent in flock protection as an intact one.

 

[shmccarthy]

Capo'd roosters are quite different from intact roosters, I hear. They will still crow just as loudly as an intact rooster, they will just not be fertile. They will also lose a lot of aggression due to lack of testosterone, and won't serve well as flock protectors. They also gain weight easily and become almost "hen plump".

Are you not wanting fertilized eggs because you are concerned with chicks, or is it a different reason? The absolute only way there will be a chick in a fertilized egg is if you incubate it, or if you allow a hen to brood them. If you collect eggs at least once a day, you will never have to worry about it, unless you free range and she decided to hide a nest. Fertilized eggs take 21 days to develop and hatch, so it would take a lot of sitting for chicks.
They also have no taste or health difference than unfertilized eggs. The only visible difference is instead of there being just a speck on the egg yolk, there is a speck with a small circle around it (the bulls eye).

 

[aart]

There's ton of info here on folks caponizing their own:
advanced search>titles only>capon

 

[BuffOrp82]

I just don't like the idea of eating fertilized eggs but I spoke to a vet who would be willing to do the procedure yesterday and he said it was a high risk procedure and he might not survive ..

And I have seen some threads with pics on doing it yourself and I just don't think I could do it. I love my chicks and couldn't stomach doing the actual cutting especially if something went wrong

Does anyone eat the fertilized eggs? Any problems with doing that?

 

[BuffOrp82]

Capo'd roosters are quite different from intact roosters, I hear. They will still crow just as loudly as an intact rooster, they will just not be fertile. They will also lose a lot of aggression due to lack of testosterone, and won't serve well as flock protectors. They also gain weight easily and become almost "hen plump".

Are you not wanting fertilized eggs because you are concerned with chicks, or is it a different reason? The absolute only way there will be a chick in a fertilized egg is if you incubate it, or if you allow a hen to brood them. If you collect eggs at least once a day, you will never have to worry about it, unless you free range and she decided to hide a nest. Fertilized eggs take 21 days to develop and hatch, so it would take a lot of sitting for chicks.
They also have no taste or health difference than unfertilized eggs. The only visible difference is instead of there being just a speck on the egg yolk, there is a speck with a small circle around it (the bulls eye).

just read this, so you eat them and really can't tell the difference? I think I may try that even though I really not fond of the idea. I don't want to risk hurting my roo .. I didn't want one to begin with but he sweet and I can't imagine my flock without him

 

[Mrs. K]

Truthfully, you have probably eaten fertilzed eggs without knowing it, especially if you have bought eggs at a farmer's market. You have to look rather carefully to see if it is fertilized or not, and not all roosters are highly fertile.

As stated above, it takes a fertilized egg + about 24 hours of heat near 100 degrees to 'start' the egg growing into a chick. This allows the hen to lay an egg every 23 hours, and put together a clutch of eggs. Then she goes to setting, and all the eggs begin growing at the same time, which allows all the chicks to hatch in the same time period. It is really quite a neat process.

If you try and hatch eggs, you will find that not all eggs hatch. And if you use a broody hen, not all of those eggs will hatch either. In fact, a couple of years ago, on the hatching forum, people wrote in how many eggs they set, and the percentage that hatched..... then added it to the previous post to get an average, total eggs hatched divided by total eggs set.

It was quite interesting to me, that while some people got very good hatches, and some got terrible, when the post got to several hundred eggs (more reliable statistics) it turned out that about 50% of the eggs hatched.

Mrs K

 

[aart]

just read this, so you eat them and really can't tell the difference? I think I may try that even though I really not fond of the idea. I don't want to risk hurting my roo .. I didn't want one to begin with but he sweet and I can't imagine my flock without him

No, there's no difference in taste....you probably wouldn't even know it's fertilized unless you know what to look for.

Your rooster is sweet? I hope he stays that way, at 8 months he's just about to 'go mature'.
When chickens first start mating (even after they figure it out) it can look rather violent, so don't be alarmed.