Nevadans?
- Thread starter SunnyDawn
- Start date
Thank you NevadaRon!
You brought a "blush" to Meringue's face!
And Sassy's gettin' herself all purty upped!
Carol
You brought a "blush" to Meringue's face!
And Sassy's gettin' herself all purty upped!
Carol
I just think Sassy is a beauty!
OK, Vegas Chick got me onto this thread and off the caponizing one for a while. Hi All, I'm in NW Vegas, have 30 hens (I think), 3 young capons, and 1 black copper french maran rooster. And 2 ducks - would anyone like ducks?
How do you like your capons? Did you do this yourself? Are you planning on keeping them as pets or are they freezer bound? How old are they and do they crow? (Hope you do not mind all the questions)
(Warning: Not for the squeamish)
Holly31.....Capons? OMG!!! That IS a blast from my past.
A decade or so ago after reading a little booklet which touted caponizing for fun and profit, I got a kit and I tried caponizing a batch of cockerels. Mistake! I soon learned that whereas you can learn an awful lot of knowledge from books, surgical skills isn't one of them. The one-dimensional does not translate well to the three-dimensional very readily. AND the chicks weren't all that appreciative, either. I ended up downright butchering several right there. My good sport (later ex) mother-in-law was my nurse assisting me out at our hay bale surgical theater. After several botched jobs, I finally managed to get one done correctly.....only to find Mother-in-law had acccidentally smothered it holding a towel over its head because she didn't like to look at their sad little faces.
Not being one to never mount up again after falling off the horse, I decided to give it another go. I talked about this misadventure with my vet (we were good friends and I was a great customer...I'm sure I sponsored several holiday office parties with my ranch calls) and explained and pleaded that if only they would just lie there, then I'm sure it would be a snap. He did the research and gave me a syringe of bird tranqs for five cockerels and.....It worked! I did four little snag-the-pine-nuts surgeries with no complications.
Two weeks later, however, there was complications. One bird had kind of a nasty infection around the scar, i.e., nobody would ever want to use his ugly carcass. The three remaining birds had developed a gas build-up under their skins which separated their skin from their bodies....In other words, they were like little chicken balloons where you could pick them up and rattle them. (Picture kind of like the Disney balloons where you have a clear balloon and then pink Mickey balloon inside). The cure for this was another incision and expressing the air out so that, hopefully, they'd heal with no further inflation. At this point I was disheartened and totally done with the project and so quickly dispatched the few capons I had amassed without ever discovering if they'd grow to be big, tender birds. As it was, I had plenty of cockerels in the freezer.
My friends have gotten years of mileage from these escapades....Yeah, I was kind of the crazy chicken lady bordering on mad scientist for a while.
On a kind of humerous note: A few years later I had a weekend ranch call for my vet. He was kind of surprised that I was so industrious on a Saturday.
"Geel, Larry, what do you mean?"
"Well, I always thought you were Jewish....the capons and all."
Holly31.....Capons? OMG!!! That IS a blast from my past.
A decade or so ago after reading a little booklet which touted caponizing for fun and profit, I got a kit and I tried caponizing a batch of cockerels. Mistake! I soon learned that whereas you can learn an awful lot of knowledge from books, surgical skills isn't one of them. The one-dimensional does not translate well to the three-dimensional very readily. AND the chicks weren't all that appreciative, either. I ended up downright butchering several right there. My good sport (later ex) mother-in-law was my nurse assisting me out at our hay bale surgical theater. After several botched jobs, I finally managed to get one done correctly.....only to find Mother-in-law had acccidentally smothered it holding a towel over its head because she didn't like to look at their sad little faces.
Not being one to never mount up again after falling off the horse, I decided to give it another go. I talked about this misadventure with my vet (we were good friends and I was a great customer...I'm sure I sponsored several holiday office parties with my ranch calls) and explained and pleaded that if only they would just lie there, then I'm sure it would be a snap. He did the research and gave me a syringe of bird tranqs for five cockerels and.....It worked! I did four little snag-the-pine-nuts surgeries with no complications.
Two weeks later, however, there was complications. One bird had kind of a nasty infection around the scar, i.e., nobody would ever want to use his ugly carcass. The three remaining birds had developed a gas build-up under their skins which separated their skin from their bodies....In other words, they were like little chicken balloons where you could pick them up and rattle them. (Picture kind of like the Disney balloons where you have a clear balloon and then pink Mickey balloon inside). The cure for this was another incision and expressing the air out so that, hopefully, they'd heal with no further inflation. At this point I was disheartened and totally done with the project and so quickly dispatched the few capons I had amassed without ever discovering if they'd grow to be big, tender birds. As it was, I had plenty of cockerels in the freezer.
My friends have gotten years of mileage from these escapades....Yeah, I was kind of the crazy chicken lady bordering on mad scientist for a while.
On a kind of humerous note: A few years later I had a weekend ranch call for my vet. He was kind of surprised that I was so industrious on a Saturday.
"Geel, Larry, what do you mean?"
"Well, I always thought you were Jewish....the capons and all."
Peep Show: I soon learned that whereas you can learn an awful lot of knowledge from books, surgical skills isn't one of them. The one-dimensional does not translate well to the three-dimensional very readily.
I recommend staying at a Holiday Inn Express....
Great Story (I'm an RN in the pre op area for surgery!)!!!
carol...
I recommend staying at a Holiday Inn Express....
Great Story (I'm an RN in the pre op area for surgery!)!!!
carol...
AH, to be in northern Nevada instead of the Mojave, but it's liveable with critters to distract me.
Capons - I must admit I am relatively new to this sport. The first two I tried to deal with were mysteries. I couldn't get enough information to do the job and my tools sucked. They stayed roosters and went to good homes.
But, as I really really love breeding and incubating my own, peeking into eggs after a few days to see the embryos growing, and playing with chicks, I was determined to find a way to deal with the 'always more than 50% of the hatch' males. I learned about caponizing. I found every scrap I could and listened to anyone who walk talk or email. I found a lot of discrepancies with methods.
So one day, I was serendipitously awarded an expired old hen, and even though she was not a young roo, she was a chicken, and in chickens the gonads are in the same place no matter what gender they are. SO, I made several cuts on her left (no ovary on the right) and found the perfect spot to make my incision. Found several pearls in there thinking about becoming eggs. It worked great with the cockerals, and now I am on my way. I bought better tools, got more formal about the procedure, but, being a licensed veterinary technician in Nevada, veterinarians thought I was breaking my ethics by cutting on an awake patient. On the other hand, they wouldn't give me any anesthesia or even sedatives to work on my birds.
Litigation and irresponsibility has made a mess of being able to do anything, from ride in the back of a truck (if you fall out, it's not the city's fault for missing a pothole repair), to letting a friend ride your pony (if you goose him and he runs, hang on or fall off, but don't sue the owner).
At any rate, desperation led me to use a little benzocaine topically, and cover his head with a towel. Being a vet tech I had a good idea of what tools to get/use, and I"m not squeemish about surgery in the least. I do this indoors in as clean an environment as can be had.
I pull a few feathers in my target zone. I use alcohol to sanitize (can't sterilize skin) the bird and my instruments. I make a 1 inch incision between the last two ribs directly forward (cranial) of the point of the hip using a sterile #15 blade on a #3 handle. If the air sac doesn't open, I nick it with the scalpel blade. I use a pair of forceps to widen the incision until my retractor fits (I use a 4 inch Weitlaner) and open the field to a good half inch. Then I peer in and there is the target - a white navy bean sized fragile blob of gland tissue in a little membrane with blood vessels around it. I use a tong intended to hold jewelry or pearls, gently grasp it, twist and give a smidge of tension. It seems to come out reasonably easy. Then I get out of there as quick as I can, put 2 stitches in the rib muscles, then 1-2 stitches in the skin. I then turn him over and do the other side. I am not a two-gonad per hole skill caponizer yet. Then I wake up the patient because by then they go to sleep under the warm lamp. I keep them indoors a day or two, then out to a private cage for a day or two, then they go with others. I have had one get a wind puff; I brought him in, alcohol wiped the skin, and poked a .5 mm by 1 mm hole with the scalpel blade, let the wind out, and they're fine after that.
NO crowing, NO fighting, just eating and acting a little like bossy hens. The testicle isn't the only hormone factory, just the important one.
I am hoping to get better at this and teach our local 4H so this can be taught to more homesteaders who don't always raise KFC chickens to 8 weeks and then slaughter.
As for me, I hate killing and dressing birds. I will sell them to people who don't mind dressing their own in exchange for being able to actually FIND a capon. They will hang around the farm until sold, or I get enough hutzpah to dress them. I may trade dressing a bird for 2 live ones, and am not quite certain, but I already have orders for more than I have, and figure this is a great way to get the breeds I want, incubate myself, and not worry about a bunch of maniac crowing boxers running amuck around the yard annoying everyone.
So stay tuned if you want to learn, there is a bunch more info on the meat thread about it, and photos, but you have to actually do it first - learning from the "book" is just about impossible. Even the book has conflicts about where to make an incision. I think I may have a publication in the works soon! I highly recommend the dead patient surgery first.
Take care All,
Capons - I must admit I am relatively new to this sport. The first two I tried to deal with were mysteries. I couldn't get enough information to do the job and my tools sucked. They stayed roosters and went to good homes.
But, as I really really love breeding and incubating my own, peeking into eggs after a few days to see the embryos growing, and playing with chicks, I was determined to find a way to deal with the 'always more than 50% of the hatch' males. I learned about caponizing. I found every scrap I could and listened to anyone who walk talk or email. I found a lot of discrepancies with methods.
So one day, I was serendipitously awarded an expired old hen, and even though she was not a young roo, she was a chicken, and in chickens the gonads are in the same place no matter what gender they are. SO, I made several cuts on her left (no ovary on the right) and found the perfect spot to make my incision. Found several pearls in there thinking about becoming eggs. It worked great with the cockerals, and now I am on my way. I bought better tools, got more formal about the procedure, but, being a licensed veterinary technician in Nevada, veterinarians thought I was breaking my ethics by cutting on an awake patient. On the other hand, they wouldn't give me any anesthesia or even sedatives to work on my birds.
Litigation and irresponsibility has made a mess of being able to do anything, from ride in the back of a truck (if you fall out, it's not the city's fault for missing a pothole repair), to letting a friend ride your pony (if you goose him and he runs, hang on or fall off, but don't sue the owner).
At any rate, desperation led me to use a little benzocaine topically, and cover his head with a towel. Being a vet tech I had a good idea of what tools to get/use, and I"m not squeemish about surgery in the least. I do this indoors in as clean an environment as can be had.
I pull a few feathers in my target zone. I use alcohol to sanitize (can't sterilize skin) the bird and my instruments. I make a 1 inch incision between the last two ribs directly forward (cranial) of the point of the hip using a sterile #15 blade on a #3 handle. If the air sac doesn't open, I nick it with the scalpel blade. I use a pair of forceps to widen the incision until my retractor fits (I use a 4 inch Weitlaner) and open the field to a good half inch. Then I peer in and there is the target - a white navy bean sized fragile blob of gland tissue in a little membrane with blood vessels around it. I use a tong intended to hold jewelry or pearls, gently grasp it, twist and give a smidge of tension. It seems to come out reasonably easy. Then I get out of there as quick as I can, put 2 stitches in the rib muscles, then 1-2 stitches in the skin. I then turn him over and do the other side. I am not a two-gonad per hole skill caponizer yet. Then I wake up the patient because by then they go to sleep under the warm lamp. I keep them indoors a day or two, then out to a private cage for a day or two, then they go with others. I have had one get a wind puff; I brought him in, alcohol wiped the skin, and poked a .5 mm by 1 mm hole with the scalpel blade, let the wind out, and they're fine after that.
NO crowing, NO fighting, just eating and acting a little like bossy hens. The testicle isn't the only hormone factory, just the important one.
I am hoping to get better at this and teach our local 4H so this can be taught to more homesteaders who don't always raise KFC chickens to 8 weeks and then slaughter.
As for me, I hate killing and dressing birds. I will sell them to people who don't mind dressing their own in exchange for being able to actually FIND a capon. They will hang around the farm until sold, or I get enough hutzpah to dress them. I may trade dressing a bird for 2 live ones, and am not quite certain, but I already have orders for more than I have, and figure this is a great way to get the breeds I want, incubate myself, and not worry about a bunch of maniac crowing boxers running amuck around the yard annoying everyone.
So stay tuned if you want to learn, there is a bunch more info on the meat thread about it, and photos, but you have to actually do it first - learning from the "book" is just about impossible. Even the book has conflicts about where to make an incision. I think I may have a publication in the works soon! I highly recommend the dead patient surgery first.
Take care All,
Quote:
Holly - Thanks so much for all the information. Not something I personally am thinking about, but I find the information vastly interesting.
Is there an age range for caponizing or can mature roosters - over a year - be done? Like neutering a dog. If so, well then I might be more interested - but for some reason I do not think it is done. (I do send mine to freezer camp, the mixed cockerels and some pure who need to be culled for defects or aggression).
See, now this is a niche that a vet should get into - if an older bird can be done. People who live in the city and have pet roos would not have to get rid of them. Just set him up an appt. like the dog or cat, snip/snip and no more crowing.
Is there an age range for caponizing or can mature roosters - over a year - be done? Like neutering a dog. If so, well then I might be more interested - but for some reason I do not think it is done. (I do send mine to freezer camp, the mixed cockerels and some pure who need to be culled for defects or aggression).
See, now this is a niche that a vet should get into - if an older bird can be done. People who live in the city and have pet roos would not have to get rid of them. Just set him up an appt. like the dog or cat, snip/snip and no more crowing.
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