What do you think about caponizing?

[mszekely]

I am brand new to all of this, so please no harsh replies!
I see that you all love your babies, but feel the need to cull or rehome roosters. I have read some older literature on raising chickens, and caponizing roosters calms them down and get them to leave the girls alone. It involves some surgery to remove the testes, kind of like neutering your cats & dogs. It was mainly done to create bigger males for meat, but the hybrid chickies have made this no longer popular. I know Meyer Hatchery sells a book and the implements needed to do the work. Has anyone done this to their rooster, and did it work? I would be interested in any information.

 

[dretd]

I like the idea of caponizing if you have cockerel that is a pet and you cannot have roosters where you live. Just remember that if you do it yourself, you are doing surgery on the animal without the benefit of anesthesia.

I guess if it were me, I would try to rehome the roo first into a home where he can be a roo. If that is not an option and you can't find a qualified vet or afford the procedure and don't want him eaten, then caponizing him yourself makes sense. If you were to ask the roo if he would rather undergo surgery without anesthesia or be eaten, imagine his response and there is your answer.

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
Excellent response!

 

[Bengalcats1]

When I had my Mean little sucker I called all around to try and find a place that would do it and pretty much got laughed off the phone

...I didn't want to get rid of him and hoped it would help him become Nicer, in the end the poor little sh*t ended up disappearing and never came back and believe it or not I actually went looking for him, I guess he met his match

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Go down the meat bird subforum. Plenty of good info on caponizing there including a long thread on how to do it.

 

[mszekely]

Just curious if anyone had done it as a spay/neuter kind of thing. Thanks for the input everyone.