Take a deep breath, they are not to old. Do the one side, if any problems arise you can always do the other side next week. That is what my mentor did on her last batch of boys that were way older then you are doing. They seemed stressed after the one side so she let them rest and recover then did the next side the next week. Don't feel pressure to get them both from one side. If you can and the opportunity is there great go for it, if not don't sweat it, two inscissions are better then hitting an artery and bleeding the bird out.
Well, I survived, and so did all of the patients....so far. I used two incisions on the Bresse and one of the younger ones. I got both testicles from one side on the other young one. All of the testicles came out intact as far as I could tell, but the proof will come later.
The Bresse were much more developed, and the testicles were much larger than the others.
I think they mature early, but none had started crowing. It is going to be interesting how they grow compared to the intact cockerels that I plan to use for breeding.
I have a few more chicks out of my broody hen, but they haven't comfortably declared themselves as of yet. They are 7 weeks old, so I can wait a week or two.
I don't know what I am going to do with all of these capons. It's better than having that many cockerels running around, though. Hopefully many of them are true capons, so I can see the difference in them in terms of size, tenderness, flavor, etc.
My husband's boss wants to learn to caponize, and he asked if I would teach him.....I can't even imagine teaching someone how to do it. Hubby told his boss that I might when I got better at it. That is gonna be a while.
I have some incubator mutts that are 4 weeks old, so I am thinking about trying to caponize next weekend at 5 weeks. I want to see if I can be consistently successful with the one sided removal in the younger birds. If so, then I will start doing them at that age.
