On 2015-03-08 2:31 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:18:54 -0700, sf > wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 10:07:03 -0700, Whirled Peas >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 03/07/2015 01:41 PM, sf wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Nobody has explained yet why the boy chicks aren't neutered and
>>>> fattened up for the dinner table.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ever hear of a capon?
>>
>> That's exactly why I asked. I never see them in stores and never see
>> them on a menu. If they are being raised as capons, where are they?
>
> I've only ever seen them a few times in my life. It would be better
> than killing off chicks just because they are male. I guess they
> don't fit the production lines at the chicken factory.
>
Here is an interesting article about capons.
I found another article that answered my question about what they do
with most of the little boy chickens. There aren't many skilled
caponizers, or farmers who are willing to provide the space or the
extra time and expense of feeding them for 4 times longer than it takes
to send a hen to market.... so they euthanize them.
http://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/capo...urbing-luxury/
In 1913, farmer George Beuoy published a pamphlet titled Whats a Capon
and Why. He believed that the castrated cockerels which, without
their testosterone, plump up to anywhere from 7 to 12 pounds could
change the face of the struggling poultry industry. He believed in the
possibility of capons so strongly that he began calling himself the
Capon King as he marketed mail-order cockerel and home castrating kits.
Capons fetched four times the price per pound of a typical chicken, he
wrote. They had value before slaughter, too: Capons would mother chicks
better than hens while still retaining enough of a roosters fierceness
to fight off hawks. If only farmers had the patience to learn
caponizing, this particular form of castration, and let the birds grow
long enough to develop their tender, distinctive flavor, capons would
become the life-giving, brain-forming, strength-producing food that is
required by the high strung workingman of modern times, Beuoy wrote.
Obviously, he was wrong.
Today, the capon has nearly disappeared from view. When capons pop up in
stores or on restaurant menus, most modern diners assume that theyre
game birds or perhaps akin to Cornish hens. But because hormonal changes
caused by caponization allow more fat to build up both below the skin
and within muscle, capons come with the promise of a substantial amount
of buttery, tender meat. So why are they gone?
It comes down to fact that the method to make a capon a capon is still
the same as it was when Beuoys wrote a process that may be an unfairly
forgotten piece of agriculture, or simply a means to a somewhat
disturbing luxury good.
The caponizer searches for the testes, each about the size of a grain of
rice, and rips them free of their connective tissue with a small slotted
spoon or, in some cases, a tool made out of a loop of horse hair.
Bill Keough spent 20 years caponizing cockerels for Iowas Wapsie
Produce, which dominated capon production before ceasing operations in
2010. To make a cockerel a capon, he explains, a caponizer must restrain
the 3 to 6 week old bird by tying weights to its wings and feet to
prevent movement and expose the rib cage. Then the caponizer cuts
between the lowest two ribs of the bird and spreads them apart with a
special tool to open up access to the body cavity. Last, the caponizer
searches for the testes, each about the size of a grain of rice, and
rips them free of their connective tissue with a small slotted spoon
or, in some cases, a tool made out of a loop of horse hair.
This is the most difficult part: The testes are delicate, and its easy
to only partially remove them, allowing some production of the male
hormones that will result in a useless animal known as a split not a
rooster, not yet a capon. The testes are also next to a crucial artery
and the kidneys, and damaging either could kill the bird. The incision
is not sutured, and the entire process is done without anesthetics or
antibiotics (though it should be said that neither anesthetics or
antibiotics are used the more routine castration of cattle or pigs).
When asked, Keough shrugs off concerns that the process could be done
more safely or humanely. Theres not any other way to do it, and I
dont think there should be, he says. If you do it right, it only
takes a few seconds and the bird doesnt know what hit him.
By the time Keough mastered the process as a teenager, he could caponize
300 birds an hour. But to get it right? It took him two or three
thousand attempts, he says. There were plenty of dead chickens laying
around, he remembers. In other words, farming capons depends upon a
highly-trained, well-paid specialists not the sort of assembly-line
labor and mechanization on which the modern poultry industry runs. When
Keough graduated from high school in the 1960s, he could charge $75 an
hour for his services, he says. If I did it now, I might get rich, he
adds, wistfully. But I spent it all. Girls¦
Even once the flocks have been caponized, they still present challenges
to the contemporary farmer. Jim Schiltz, who owns specialty poultry
processor Schiltz Foods, struggles to get his suppliers to meet even the
modest demand for capons. FDA inspectors maintain extremely strict
standards for what can be sold as a capon, and for flocks to make the
grade, you need to give them a little TLC. You need to give them a
space. You need to feed them slow, says Schiltz. If a bird isnt
certified as a true capon, it can only be sold as one of those mammoth
roasters that dont fetch a high enough price to justify raising the
bird for 17 weeks (conventional chickens are often slaughtered after as
few as four weeks).
You need to give them a little TLC. You need to give them a space. You
need to feed them slow.
Schiltz says hes often at loggerheads with farmers many dont bother
to fill his orders, exasperated with the level of care required, while
others cut corners, raising flocks where only half the birds can be sold
as capons. Theyre crap, yknow. I dont even want them, hardly, he
says, sighing. Theres an art to doing this.
Schiltz could take the time to whip his farmers into shape, train more
caponizers (he says he knows only six people up to that task) and
modernize the process if there was stronger demand for the birds. But
its always been a niche product, and the market has only shrunk. Wapsie
at its peak processed 500,000 capons per year, and Schiltz estimates his
annual capon production is a tenth of that. In contrast, American farms
routinely produce more than 8 billion chickens each year.
How is it that the capon has been left behind even as consumers demand a
greater range of choice? Founder of specialty food brand Dartagnan
Ariane Daguin believes its a question of demographics. A hundred years
ago, when Beuoy prophesied a capon in every pot, American families
averaged around five members, and so a seven to twelve pound bird was a
reasonable size for a family meal. Now the average family has fewer than
three members. So, says Daguin, the capon is becoming obsolete.
She, like Schiltz, simply tries to service a lingering demand:
Dartagnan sells fewer than 2,000 of its $89 French-style capons, fed
milk and bread instead of grain, to the small number of European
expatriates who dont traditionally eat turkey at holidays.
I brined and roasted one of Jim Schiltzs 7.5 pound capons according to
a simple recipe by Gabrielle Hamilton of New York Citys Prune
restaurant, and the first taste was a revelation. The flavor was
unusually rich and complex, distinct from any chicken or turkey Id had
before, and the texture both moist and firm. After years of bland
chickens and dried-out holiday turkeys, a taste of capon made me wish
George Beuoys vision of the Capon of Tomorrow had come to pass.
But developing a mass market for capons would require a Herculean
marketing effort the producers currently show no inclination to
undertake. And without that public awareness, its unlikely the same
level of feel-good publicity that makes humanely raised chicken a
supermarket staple will come to bear on the caponization process.
With the limited prospects for their products, many capon producers
dont bother touting the jaw-dropping taste of their birds. In the words
of Jim Schiltz: Its just a chicken with its nuts cut off.