Hello! I have recently decided to get into meat birds after about five years of raising layers + a few pet guinea fowl. My first attempts at it are arriving Apr. 1st from McMurray Hatchery--- 7 Cornish (Regular, not CX) cockerels. Recently, I have been seeing a lot of threads about caponizing. Would I need to caponize them? I know Cornish take 5-6 months to reach butchering size, and that they would start acting like roos at (and correct me if I'm wrong) 8-10 wks. I have not had roos before so I don't know their behaviour exactly, but I do know they can be aggressive to each other. Would I be able to keep them in a 275-300ish sq. ft. run together that long? I really don't want to caponize, no offense to the people who do it but it looks painful to the bird. If the answer to my question is yes, I will probably just change the order to hens. Sorry for the all the stupid questions, like I said I am a major newbie. Also, semi-off topic, I had a thought after reading some of the caponizing threads- has anyone considered considered using human sore-throat spray to numb the area to be cut before caponizing? Just an odd thought, I haven't actually researched it so I don't know if chickens are immune to it/it doesn't work for some reason, etc. but it seemed like an interesting possibility to make the operation less painful for the bird.
I have never kept a bunch of roos, however I have read on BYC that if you can keep the roos in a bachelor pad - no hens present - it would help. Just consider that they will have those pesky male hormones and there will be crowing before they are old enough to butcher.
As long as there are no females to fight for, I don't think you will have any problems with them injuring one another. I have never kept a bachelor pad though so no personal experience. They might spar occasionally but nothing too serious and they will crow...a lot.
Well, they won't technically have no hens around- they will be in a run next to hens, but not directly in the run or coop with them. Does anyone know if that will be a problem?
I did it last year with a group of Brahma roos and it worked out okay. By about 4 months they had a lot of hormones going on and would even try to mate with each other even though they were all roosters. You want to make sure to separate out any that are getting picked on and being kept from the food. I had a smaller back up pen for this. Other than that they all did okay. I processed them about 18 to 20 weeks (some were older than others since they were a staggered hatching). They were definitely loud and very male by then, but they still tasted good.
Alright, thank you so much! Very relieved to hear this because I just learned my order shipped a few hours ago.
