Capons

I'm with you! I would love to learn, but the thought of experimenting on a live bird with no one to help me gives me the willies. I don't want to just muddle through without someone to tell me what I am doing wrong. Also, the birds that I can practice on have been the ones I was butchering, and they have huge testes. I want to caponize them young, and it is a lot different working on a 6-pound bird than a 1-pound bird.
I don't mean to butt in, but I just wanted to offer the advice to only do this on young small birds. I don't know anyone that can caponize/castrate a full grown roo. There's just too much of an advanced blood supply then, and they tend to bleed to death very easily.
 
Do what I did. Practice on a dead bird. You might want to do it quickly after they die. Otherwise they get all stiff.
I think it would be a good idea to practice on a bird similar in age to the ones you plan to caponize, so the size of the anatomy is similar, and to make sure your instruments are going to work with a live bird to remove the testicles.
 
Caponizing a rooster is done for the same reasons you would turn a bull into a steer. The meat will be tender and fattier instead of tough and stringy.
 
Caponizing a rooster is done for the same reasons you would turn a bull into a steer. The meat will be tender and fattier instead of tough and stringy.
And it eliminates a lot of the aggressive, territorial or tetchy behaviors that intact males may be prone to.

The group of Red Rangers I raised this year had 10 cockerels and 3 pullets, and I thought I might be arrested for illegal cock fighting once they got to about 8 weeks. The cockerels sparred constantly, and kept picking on the pullets.

And they crowed. At 5:30 in the morning. And I am not a morning person. It was only because I kept myself under an iron fist of control that there were not impromptu chicken murders early in the morning.

If I had caponized them, then most of these annoying behaviors would either have not happened or would have happened a lot less.
 
That's interesting. My freedom rangers are 10 to 11 weeks old and so far only one crows and it's a pretty wimpy crow at that. They have been sparring since they were 3 weeks old though.
 
That's interesting. My freedom rangers are 10 to 11 weeks old and so far only one crows and it's a pretty wimpy crow at that. They have been sparring since they were 3 weeks old though.

Lucky! I started doing the cockerels at 8 weeks and had all of them in the freezer by 11 weeks because I was afraid the neighbors were going to start complaining. I was putting them into the layer coop because they would not crow around the mean hens.
 
I would love to know how to do this procedure. It would be a great benefit, as I don't have the means to create separate housing for all my cockerels. They're going to get nasty soon before I can get them to butchering age.

Any Canadians doing this? Where to get the proper tools?
 

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