How to caponize a rooster Warning Graphic pics

[TanithT]

I've been doing in-the-field work with reptiles in places where you can't take a vaporizer for years, and frankly I've rarely missed it unless I need to do a very prolonged or extensive procedure. This said, I don't do intracoelomic work in the field, just superficial and usually non-invasive procedures. Open drop boxing that involves any container of known liter volume, a cotton ball and some isoflurane works perfectly in field conditions. You actually need a vaporizer less than you think you do. They are handy and convenient for premixing a percentage of iso and O2, but for the most part this is a logistics issue that can be solved with a cotton ball and any gadget that will give you a slow but steady influx of air, also of known volume.

Reptiles tend to need rebooting after anesthesia, so I intubate (a red rubber catheter for human use of appropriate diameter works fine if I don't have the fancy veterinary set handy) and do what the last vet I worked with referred to as "cobra sucking", eg, gentle mouth breathing for them, being careful not to overinflate their delicate little lungs. Reptiles are dead easy to intubate. Never done a bird; I am a research tech/zookeeper, not a clinic tech, so I couldn't tell you much about avian anatomy or metabolism specifics.

Ventilation is a whole other issue than vaporizing. I recommend the Vetronics small animal ventilator (got mine for about a grand) for prolonged procedures, but I don't take that in the field either, and reptiles recover after anesthesia a lot better on room air or secondhand air with extra CO2 than they do on O2, due to their breathing mechanism triggers being substantially different from a mammal's. Again, don't know enough about how birds would do under the same field conditions, but it's worth researching to see if they may be similar enough to respond well to the open drop box + manual resuscitation if necessary protocol.

Despite years of fieldwork with snakes doing iso drop boxing with absolutely no patient losses (they tolerate it very, very well indeed), I am less than sanguine about this protocol being used by backyard amateurs to perform major abdominal surgery. I think that there's a lot of potential for harm and suffering in it. But this is really a case of being the lesser of two evils, eg, if the folks determined to home caponize don't get their hands on iso and aren't educated about the open drop box procedure, they'll be using no anesthesia at all. That makes me even less sanguine, so I am being as forthcoming as I know how to be about how this protocol is used in my field on research specimens.

 

[jim&julie]

For goodness sakes, this proceedure has been done for 100s of years by common villagers and early american house wives. I think you are in too deep. Believe me after the glands are removed a stitch, a drop of super glue or as more commonly practiced the Capon is simply kept quiet for a day or two and allowed back into the flock. They do not flinch, scream in pain or pull away. They are up, eating scratching and normal as can be right away. Probably the most important pre opp. proceedure is to withold food and water for 36 hours or so. When he gets up all he wants to do is eat.

 

[joebryant]

I just told my rooster that if he doesn't shut up I am going to give him to you. He hasn't made a sound for over an hour.

 

[KatyTheChickenLady]

LMAO!!! Joe finally shows up on the meat thread . . . and delivers.

 

[TanithT]

jim&julie :

For goodness sakes, this proceedure has been done for 100s of years by common villagers and early american house wives. I think you are in too deep. Believe me after the glands are removed a stitch, a drop of super glue or as more commonly practiced the Capon is simply kept quiet for a day or two and allowed back into the flock. They do not flinch, scream in pain or pull away. They are up, eating scratching and normal as can be right away. Probably the most important pre opp. proceedure is to withold food and water for 36 hours or so. When he gets up all he wants to do is eat.

Birds are as well innervated as mammals; in short, they have the same amount and type of nerve endings. They tend to be cryptic about showing pain; eg, you won't see the same behavioral signs of pain as you do in mammals. Of necessity they have evolved to be cryptic, to conceal signs of weakness or unfitness which can get them targeted out of a flock and eaten. So in a purely functional sense, pain is not as crippling to them as it is to mammals. An animal in pain will continue to move as normally as possible, eat and thermoregulate, because unlike a larger mammal, they'll die rapidly if they do not. The subjective experience of pain for them is quite likely to be as intense as any mammal's, however.

I am a lot more familiar with the biochemistry of pain in reptiles than in birds, but there are similarities, and the science I am familiar with says that pain without marked clinical or behavioral signs does exist and can be observed and measured. Just not by the standards you instinctively understand as applying to mammals, or to yourself. A progressive look at the blood chemistry of pain and stress in a behaviorally normal animal is very interesting indeed, but if you don't have a wet chemistry machine on premises, you won't be seeing what's happening internally. That doesn't mean it's not happening however.

Behavioral signs of distress do not necessarily correlate well to the internal experience of pain when we're talking about small animals, particularly non-mammals. That is something worth thinking hard about, whether or not you choose to go ahead with the procedure. I am not going to tell you not to do abdominal surgery without anesthesia on your own birds if you so choose. They're your livestock and you can do what you like with them. But I will say that you won't necessarily be able to tell whether or not they are in significant pain by their behavior alone. That's one of the things that makes a vet's job harder when working with non-mammals; clinical pain signs are diminished or absent, but biochemically and pharmacokinetically unrelieved pain still has a significant effect on the patient's recovery and also drug absorption and half-life.​

 

[Holly31]

I may add to the above that with birds, they are often dead before they show signs of illness (or pain). Birds are physiologically wired to feel pain, so as technicians, we take an oath to "to no harm" the way the veterinarians and doctors do. Perhaps that is why we are more sensitive to the issue of providing pain relief, whether it is analgesic or anesthetic, to any creature we are working with.

Farm animals feel no less pain than pets, and I always shudder when it is time to castrate the bulls into steers, because they are roped, hurled to the ground or frightened into stocks, and always without anesthesia and sometimes without analgesia their scrotums are crimped until their vas deferens and blood supplies are severed, eventually resulting in the necrosis of and amputation of, their bull - parts. I have used elastrators on goats, seen all kinds of de-horning implements, and it would be really nice if a lot of this would all go away. BUt, in the name of cheap food, it doesn't.

I think as we back yard chickeners are attempting to do, we prefer the non-commericalization of our food, growing our own fresh eggs and fresh meat. Part of the husbandry in our mindsets is that it is ok to eat animals if we are humane to them and treat them with respect even until their last moments, which does not happen in commercial farms that process thousands of animals a day that we see in grocery stores.

I would LIKE to provide pain relief to the animals I care for, including the 5 minutes that a cock must endure while I remove his roosterness for my own benefit; yet it is for his benefit too: he will not become dog fighting bait, go to cock fighting, have a miserable life until his execution day fighting with other roos or over hens or get bloodied combs and feet. He will have a quiet, peaceful, comfy life wandering the grass and garden in peace, quietly, which, to me, enhances his overall humane live treatment (until B-day).

To avoid being hypocritical, I would like to find a way to do what has to be done in the least trumatic, most humane way. If I can put his head in a box with a little isoflourane on a cotton ball, and he can dream for 5 minutes and wake up without the trauma, he will be that much more healthy and better to eventually eat than if he had to endure 2 days of starvation and thirst followed by being caught and cut. If that is what has to be done, it will be done, but I'd like to explore all other more humane options that I can.

I also want to teach this to the 4H group my son belongs to. NO ONE in the 4H group, including those who own a large pig farm, has ever done this, some have not even heard of it. This country has developed the "solution" to this capon problem by breeding Cornish Crosses. I am not sure what everyone else does with their roos. I find my ability to replace my flocks are reduced by having to deal with half my hatches being male. Right now I have 5 roos, 3 awaiting my attempts to caponize them, and 2 that survived my attempts. There is MUCH too muc crowing, fighting, and not enough cages to go around, nor time to treat each roo to a private bachelor pad.

So I am back to caponizing, and looking for the best solution, right here on Back Yard Chickens, because I know the other people here care about the traditional methods of farming, but don't poo poo technology that may enhance the traditions. We don't cut their heads off with axes any more, we should try to find a better way to caponize if we can. I FINALLY found an anatomy book that shows me where the gonads are, and I will be working on the 8 week olds this weekend, and hopefully I can get a little happy something on a cotton ball, an aquarium pump, and a box, and make it easier for all of us.

I appreciate all your comments and help in working through the moral and physical issues involved with this ancient but lost art. Many Thanks - Holly, a Nevada LVT

 

[TanithT]

Well said, Holly, but the withholding of food and water will hold true whether or not you use iso; it's organ distension and the risk of peritonitis that you're controlling for. Iso won't make a difference in this respect, and without intubation and ventilation you may not be able to hold the bird under for long enough to give you a lot of leisure fishing for the organ in question.

EDIT after some applied research: yes, you can hold a bird reliably under using open drop boxing, you just need to keep replenishing the iso to keep roughly a 3-5% concentration as you allow room air into the bag enclosing the head.

Practice on dead birds. Necropsies are your friends.

 

[jim&julie]

Also if you do not have luck finding the jewels 12-14 weeks may be better. The rule of thumb is 2 lbs. or as close as possable. I found at 8 weeks there is only a slim chance that they are developed enough to find them. When I did they wre the size of a pencil lead.

 

[Holly31]

Quote:
Yes, I wish I had a dead roo to practice on. And you are right, I will still have to withhold food and water, but I don't hold back more than 24 hours for food and 12 hours for water given the speed of a chicken digestion system. I have generally tried to feed and water one morning, then a little water at night but no food, then in the morning they are ready. Most stuff is beyond the duodenum by then. And especially in our climate - humidity is generally 10% and summer temps 99-109, even in the shade or a shelter. Blah. I've only ever done a necropsy on a cat or dog (or hen, no roos). Now that I have the anatomy in front of me, HOPEFULLY I will not have to spend too much time fishing!

 

[TanithT]

Holly, since you couldn't do a quick rooster necropsy, I did it for you. Images can be found here: http://s282.photobucket.com/albums/kk271/danceswthcobras/Chicken%20anatomy%20cheat%20sheet/

I found myself the owner of six unwanted roosters destined for freezer camp this evening, so I figured I'd do a bit of applied research. The good news is that iso drop boxing appears to work quite well in chickens, actually better than it does in reptiles as they maintain voluntary respiration. I used a one quart freezer bag (this is effectively one liter) and double the normal concentration of isoflurane (half a cc rather than a quarter) to allow some space for air exchange after the initial respirations. In theory what you'd want to do is have a measured air flow in and out of the bag, and replenish the iso .25cc's at a time for each liter of air exchanged. In practice I eyeballed it and just allowed some air in the bag while keeping my fancy isoflurane dispenser (a stretched out cotton ball) over the animal's nares in the bag. He went down very rapidly and stayed down reliably for five minutes while I continued to monitor respiration.

At five minutes I tested level of anesthesia with a mildly uncomfortable stimulus (pulled a feather from the hip area) and got some motor response, so I replenished the iso and continued. No further response was detected for another five minutes as the stimulus continued. With just enough air exchange in the bag to keep a decent oxygen flow, half a cc of iso produced reasonably reliable anesthesia for several minutes, with clear motor response to painful stimulus occurring at the end of this period.

The setup could be optimized by taping gauze topped with a cotton ball to the nares and metering a slow introduction and exchange of air in the bag with a nebulizer or aquarium pump set to deliver a relatively slow measured volume of air. Additionally I would strongly recommend topical analgesia as pain stimulus brings animals up from anesthesia much more rapidly due to chemical response. That was definitely happening in this animal.

So the answer is yes, you can easily iso drop box a rooster for simple veterinary procedures using a cotton ball, a Ziplock bag and a half a cc of isoflurane for every 4-5 minutes you need him under. Because there was some degree of motor response to painful stimulus during the lighter stages of anesthesia, topical and/or injectable analgesia *and* monitoring the iso replenishment is strongly recommended.

The animal maintained good respiration throughout and was recovered by the simple expedient of removing the bag. Some hours later he is alert and aware and normal appearing. He'll be headed to freezer camp with the others in the morning, as there is a limit to what I'm willing to put a live animal through before its scheduled slaughter just to satisfy curiosity. Taking a short iso nap and having a few feathers plucked is within my ethical limits; actual surgery is not.

As to the caponization.....dear god what a horrible job this was, on a dead patient where I had plenty of time to mess around and no worries about damaging the patient (who was already exsanguinated, decapitated, scalded and plucked). Young rooster testicles are roughly the size of jellybeans, there is a lot of delicate and critical tissue immediately surrounding the thing, and even with good equipment (spay hook, spreader, forceps, scalpels, etc) it was a pretty sorry job. Endoscopy would have helped, but my machine's in the zoo vet clinic and I was processing roosters at home, so I settled for a powerful flashlight. I do not believe I could have succeeded on a live patient after doing two dead ones with pretty poor results, and I was unwilling to make the attempt.

I will note that my dead patients were not food or water deprived and had full stomachs and crops, so it's quite possible that this made a substantial difference in the difficulty level of the job. However, the lung positioning is not going to change, and you are perilously near the lung when fiddling about in there. See this photo in particular http://s282.photobucket.com/albums/...cheat sheet/?action=view&current=P7280031.jpg for a vivid image of what happens if you go between the wrong ribs or angle your probe wrong; you will nick a lung. This caused instant bleeding and clotting in a dead animal that had been exsanguinated more than an hour ago. I imagine you'd lose a live patient fairly quickly.

This isn't a job I'd be really sanguine about taking on, and it doesn't strike me as the kind of thing you can really learn from the Internet.