There was a woman on this forum who bought what she thought was 25 CX from TSC, and she ended up with White Leghorns. They gave her money back, but they obviously wouldn't take the birds back, so she was trying to get somebody to take them.I bought a dozen cornish cross at TSC. Three turned out to be regular White Rocks. You'll see those in the third picture. The rest are exactly as I expected. Freezer camp starts tomorrow. These are now eight weeks old.
Now that I look at my skinny boys, I think I may just have assumed they were white rocks... Do they look like white leghorn cockerels to you? They're flighty.
I've looked at a bunch of photos, and now I'm sure I have three white leghorns. I jumped to the conclusion that they were white rocks because they were supposed to be cornish X rocks. I'm going to a friends' house (in three weeks) as soon as school is out to give another caponizing lesson. I suppose I should take these three boys with me. At that point they will be ten weeks old, which is a little late, but they don't have a lot of muscle development yet. Caponizing roosters past six months makes them fat and happy, but I haven't found them to be really good for the table. I'm glad you brought up caponizing... I might have given these potential table birds away thinking they wouldn't be worth the feed.I am a novice, but that was the first thing I thought about when i saw the pictures...and I do know that White Leghorns are commonly carried at TSC during chick days because many folks like a white egg. I heard someone say that trying to catch a White Leghorn is like unto an Olympic sport because they are so flighty.
Your boys just appear to me that they aren't going to be very meaty, but that could just be their age.
I have a White Rock hen and she isn't flighty. I have some White Rock cockerels coming Monday that I am planning to caponize in a few weeks, which will be my first experience with the malesof that breed.
Perhaps some other folks can chime in regarding the breed of your "Three Amigos"
The testicles may be a little harder to get out intact since they are a little older, but I would think they would be okay as table birds because they will not have undergone much sexual development. I read a historical doument from the 1940`s `s about caponization, and they were recommending caponization for families on the homestead so that there would be readily available meat during the winter, since they can grow much longer before processing. It is an interesting document:
Awesome link. Thanks. It's one I hadn't read before. I generally don't have trouble removing the whole testicle. I use a beehive-frame wire through a ceramic tube, crimped at the wire-loop end, to surround the testicle and draw it forward. It works like the antiquated horsehair retractors. I wish someone still made them. Anyway, I sever the vas deferens using a Bovie cautery. I've modified a baby spoon to hold under the testicle during the cauterization so that I don't accidentally drop anything back into the body cavity. I'm working on a ceramic spoon to replace the baby spoon. I want something deeper but narrower. Cauterizing rather than pulling or cutting means no blood. I have forceps, but I've never tried the grab and pull method to remove the testes. I've read that some use forceps to grab, twist, and pull. Seems like unnecessary roughness to me.
Do you suture or superglue the skin when you are finished?? I know that some folks do.
Sorry.....mechanically achieve hemostasis......mechanically control bleeding....
Got it. I don't have a strong enough medical vocabulary. Learned something new today. Thanks
