GRAPHIC PICS of my day learning to caponize

[Flame80]

The cartarizing tool is nice. In my original post I stated my high school ag teacher used a soldering iron which basiclly did the same thing. We went in on BOTH sides and we also had pure oxygen placed near the birds nostrils. But we did not stitch the birds up. They heal very quickly!

 

[lightspeed]

Some of the supplies. My instructor had a cool low tech "table" a piece of packing styrofoam and large bubble wrap. She said the slight stretching of the bird is ness. to cut the correct location. She put wide bands at the wing and feet and secured them w/ bungee.


The feathers in the area were very easy to pluck and the bird didn't seem to care. She is pulling the skin back so that her inscision of skin and muscle will not line up. She is going between the last two ribs. This pic doesn't show it well but there is a marked depression you cannot miss between the top of the thigh and the bottom rib.


This is the beginning of the skin inscision. She cuts the skin only on the first pass.


This is the completed skin cut


She adjusted the skin opening over the area of the muscle she was cutting. With the exposed muscle it was easier to see the correct place to cut.


retracting the opening to see and breaking the membrane for a view into the cavity. You can see intestine it this shot.


here you can see the tool she used to tear away the membrane (the piece of flesh diagonally from the end of the tool)


The object to the left with the slightly more yellow color is the teste, the uppermost one, the others are intestine


This is the modified straw and wire gripper, she gently twisted the straw to detatch it from the bird, but it just wouldn't easily detatch, so she had a plan B


here she is still trying to twist it.


she had a cauderizing tool, it worked well to seperate the teste from the bird. She bought it online she said it was around $50


here you can see the connective tissue being cauderized


and here it is out


Here is the second teste, she goes in through the same opening. You can see the second membrane that has to be removed before the teste can be clearly seen. She removes it w/ the same modified straw, she said the second one cannot be cauderized, at least through the same opening.


couple of stitches w/ sewing thread, but she uses a suture needle, she said regular sewing needles just were not sharp enough, there was way to much tugging of the skin


all stitched up


She uses alchohol on a cotton ball to swab the area and check for blood vessels before cutting anything at all, and plans her cuts where there are no blood vessels to lessen blood loss. It is like magic these were not very visible if at all before she swabbed with the alchohol.


I took several pics to try and show placement, but very few showed the detail and landmarks that were clearly visible in real life. this was the closest she stated how important the slight stretching of the bird is to locate landmarks easily there is a definate valley between the last rib and the thigh, the muscle cut needs to be between the last two ribs.



Sorry for the amount of pics, I took many more and tried to narrow it down to just the essentials to tell a complete story.

I want to make clear this isn't my information, I was the student. The woman showing me how to do this has an amazing success rate, she has only lost one bird total and that was to a respiratory infection, she has even caponized older birds then is recomended (special circumstances made this ness she doesn't do it regularly)and had no fatalities.

Thank you SO MUCH for this awesome pictorial of the caponizing surgery! I now understand a bit more than previously....and I think I wont opt for this after all.

 

[Ningauble3020]

Great pics, OP! I am getting some roos from a hatch of a dozen of American Bresse and I can only keep one intact. So I plan to pull the feathers off, mark the incision spot, put the bird into the CO2 chamber made with two boxes linked by tubing an release the vinegar and baking soda to produce CO2. Once the bird is drowsy, remove from the chamber, disinfect the area, sterile dress, lay out my surgical instruments, check incision site, cut into the bird, use the wound stretcher to hold open the incision into muscle, locate the testes...if I've kept the birds off feed for 3 days, should be easier to locate with bright headlamp, then i plan to inject the testicle with a 20% saline solution instead of surgically removing them because it has been used in Veterinary medicine to cause testes to become necrotic and stop producing sperm with fewer sequelae/complications that cutting out tissue. Then I intend to put butterfly "suture" bandages to close the wound, disinfect one last time with Chlorehexidine and keep the bird in a quiet spot for at least a week. Will report back on my progress.

 

[Painted Calls]

Great pics, OP! I am getting some roos from a hatch of a dozen of American Bresse and I can only keep one intact. So I plan to pull the feathers off, mark the incision spot, put the bird into the CO2 chamber made with two boxes linked by tubing an release the vinegar and baking soda to produce CO2. Once the bird is drowsy, remove from the chamber, disinfect the area, sterile dress, lay out my surgical instruments, check incision site, cut into the bird, use the wound stretcher to hold open the incision into muscle, locate the testes...if I've kept the birds off feed for 3 days, should be easier to locate with bright headlamp, then i plan to inject the testicle with a 20% saline solution instead of surgically removing them because it has been used in Veterinary medicine to cause testes to become necrotic and stop producing sperm with fewer sequelae/complications that cutting out tissue. Then I intend to put butterfly "suture" bandages to close the wound, disinfect one last time with Chlorehexidine and keep the bird in a quiet spot for at least a week. Will report back on my progress.

This just sounds like a slow painful death waiting to happen. I haven't read up on the techniques you mention, so I'm just purely going off of medical experience of my own.

I would not slightly gas a bird with CO2. Birds do not do well under anesthesia in a controlled environment under an anesthesiologist's care.

I'd also have all your stuff set up and ready. Not wait until the bird is drowsy from being deprived of oxygen.

The part that really makes me scratch my head is the fact you want to basically kill an organ and leave it intact. Under the study you read about, do the testes just atrophy? In your reply you said they become necrotic. That would equal raging infection if left to rot inside the bird.

Do you have links to this procedure? It is quite interesting as I've never heard of it before.

 

[Kusanar]

This just sounds like a slow painful death waiting to happen. I haven't read up on the techniques you mention, so I'm just purely going off of medical experience of my own.

I would not slightly gas a bird with CO2. Birds do not do well under anesthesia in a controlled environment under an anesthesiologist's care.

I'd also have all your stuff set up and ready. Not wait until the bird is drowsy from being gassed.

The part that really makes me scratch my head is the fact you want to basically kill an organ and leave it intact. Under the study you read about, do the testes just atrophy? In your reply you said they become necrotic. That would equal raging infection if left to rot inside the bird.

Do you have links to this procedure? It is quite interesting as I've never heard of it before.

I agree, the main reason for using anesthesia is to reduce stress and I don't see how half suffocating a bird and then doing surgery on it while it's oxygen levels are super low would be less stressful than just doing it.

I also don't think I would want to eat a bird with necrotic tissue in it even if it doesn't negatively affect the bird's health and wellbeing. And if you aren't going to eat him, why caponize him?

 

[Painted Calls]

I agree, the main reason for using anesthesia is to reduce stress and I don't see how half suffocating a bird and then doing surgery on it while it's oxygen levels are super low would be less stressful than just doing it.

I wasn't going that far into it, but exactly lol.

CO2 is not the same as anesthesia.

 

[Kiki]

Oh my.

 

[Ningauble3020]

This just sounds like a slow painful death waiting to happen. I haven't read up on the techniques you mention, so I'm just purely going off of medical experience of my own.

I would not slightly gas a bird with CO2. Birds do not do well under anesthesia in a controlled environment under an anesthesiologist's care.

I'd also have all your stuff set up and ready. Not wait until the bird is drowsy from being gassed.
O3ve
The part that really makes me scratch my head is the fact you want to basically kill an organ and leave it intact. Under the study you read about, do the testes just atrophy? In your reply you said they become necrotic. That would equal raging infection if left to rot inside the bird.

Do you have links to this procedure? It is quite interesting as I've never heard of it before.

Sorry for typos on my cell!

Great points! Ty for replying. Here's a link about using 20% saline aqueous solution injectable to cause necrotic tissue. It appears the body's immune response in rats and humans and in other studies donkeys was a better tolerance than traditional orchiectomy or cutting out these testes. The testes shriveled, became hard stonelike lumps and the immune systems neutralized the tissue and formed a thin proteinous band around the now foreign tissue. Internal membraning? I was unable to find references on bird use but the focus in society skews to mammals? The CO2 issues is important too. Even a little too much leads to quick though thrpugh all the studies quiet and peaceful permanent sleep perhaps with seizure spasms at higher concentrations. At 10% or less though a good few minutes of relaxation wouls help prevent jerky movements while doing delicate surgery. We can watch the respiration slow, head shaking a bit, and then droopy drowsy behavior. A quick minor pinch should show at least increase heartbeat and respiration if they feel pain and is harmless. Numbing the surgical window with ice makes sense. The tools are autoclaved in a pressure cooker and disinfected with alcohol. Then the procedure which is somewhat experimental not because of more patient danger but because it may not sterilize the testes in the same way in chickens is carried out. Close the wound disinfect the skin opening buttrrfly the incision site and keep the patient quiet and safe for gentle recovery. There is 100% mortality for these roos due to their use as dog and cat food. Some will die during the operation. None will suffer needlessly. All should receive swift merciful and as close to pain and stress free lives as possible. Will try to post links later. I hope the site can take this saline injection of calcium chloride 20% in sterile water and run with it. Perhaps we could make smaller more targeted incisions with faster recovery and even fewer air bloat and other complications?

 

[casportpony]

@Ningauble3020, using co2 seems like a really bad idea, especially with baking soda and vinegar.

 

[Poco Pollo]

Great pics, OP! I am getting some roos from a hatch of a dozen of American Bresse and I can only keep one intact. So I plan to pull the feathers off, mark the incision spot, put the bird into the CO2 chamber made with two boxes linked by tubing an release the vinegar and baking soda to produce CO2. Once the bird is drowsy, remove from the chamber, disinfect the area, sterile dress, lay out my surgical instruments, check incision site, cut into the bird, use the wound stretcher to hold open the incision into muscle, locate the testes...if I've kept the birds off feed for 3 days, should be easier to locate with bright headlamp, then i plan to inject the testicle with a 20% saline solution instead of surgically removing them because it has been used in Veterinary medicine to cause testes to become necrotic and stop producing sperm with fewer sequelae/complications that cutting out tissue. Then I intend to put butterfly "suture" bandages to close the wound, disinfect one last time with Chlorehexidine and keep the bird in a quiet spot for at least a week. Will report back on my progress.

. 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 see the prep, but his birds were fasted before he began work. Proper fasting before caponizing and then correct positioning and stretching of the bird, one quick incision in the correct place (the intercostal space between the last two ribs), and complete removal of the testicles by cutting the vas deference attached to each testicle is the best way to create capons. If you want further information, please contact me through my website. My contact page is working but my retail pages aren’t finished. MousePotatoFarm.com. I’ve been caponizing birds for about ten years, and I don’t think reinventing the procedure is good for you or your birds. Reduce stress and trauma for the bird by practicing on cadavers first. Learn the anatomy before you start to work on live birds. Study the procedures practiced in China. They have schools, much like our tech schools, where people pay to attend and learn how to caponize as a career.