84 The Illustrated Book' of Poultry. 



curved to tlic proper horizontal position. A graduated dial, as employed by M. Martin, is 

 also highly useful, since different-sized fowls, or birds at different stages, will require different 

 quantities of food. 



For many markets, and for home use always, cooping up is not at all essential to fattening. 

 Chickens or fowls reared at liberty and in good health, will lay on weight rapidly, and make 

 splendid birds, if simply confined five or six together in a shed floored with clean sand, and 

 fed three times daily with as much soft food as they will eat. The first meal must be given 

 at daylight, and the last at nearly dusk, and they must be kept warm and sheltered. If they 

 are kept waiting for food in the morning they fret, and the feeding of the day before is practically 

 neutralised. Birds will often add one-third of their weight if taken off" their runs and fattened 

 for a fortnight merely in this natural way. 



Closely connected with the subject of fattening is the operation of caponising, or depriving 

 the cockerels of the power of reproduction, so largely carried on in France, but comparatively 

 little practised in this country. There is no doubt that the weight of the birds and delicacy of the 

 flesh are enormously increased by it ; and on the ground of cruelty there is little to be said whilst 

 all our oxen and most of our sheep are prepared for the butcher in a similar way. Considerable 

 ignorance prevails on the subject in England as to the practical value of the operation ; and even ' 

 Mr. Tegetmeier,* after quoting a description of the process from the same French work from which 

 we take our own, adds that " the operation of making capons and poulardes is attended with 

 considerable danger. The advantages gained are slight in comparison with the risk of losing the 

 bird, and with the positive amount of unnecessary pain inflicted on the animal. We would 

 therefore by no means recommend its adoption." On the contrarj-, the usual mortalitj- in France 

 amongst the birds thus treated is only about one in forty, and the danger is thought so little of 

 that the operation is frequently committed to mere children. In Italy, also, capons are largely 

 prepared for market ; and even in China the process has been extensively adopted. That it is 

 not so in England is simply owing to the neglect of poultry generally in a commercial point 

 of view. 



Tlie French operation is best described in the work already referred to by Mdlle. Millet- 

 Robinet. The time chosen is about the age of four months, and when the weather is rather 

 cool and moist ; in the heat of summer it is attended with danger, and is rarely performed. 

 The instruments are two — a small curved knife, kept very sharp, and a curved surgical needle, 

 with some waxed thread. Two persons are required, one of whom operates while the other holds 

 the bird. 



The operator sits down, and the assistant holds the bird on his lap, with its back towards him, 

 and the right side downwards ; the lowermost leg being held firmly along the body, and the left 

 leg being drawn backwards towards the tail, so as to expose the left flank, where the incision is 

 made. A few feathers being plucked off to expose the skin, the latter is raised up with the needle 

 so as to avoid the intestines, and an incision large enough to admit the finger easily is made into 

 the abdominal cavity, just at the posterior edge of the last rib ; in fact the knife is kept close 

 to the edge of the bone as a guide. Should any portion of the bowels protrude through the wound 

 they must be gently .returned. The forefinger is then introduced, and passed behind the intestines 

 towards the spine, on each side of which the two testicles are situated, being in a young bird of 

 four months rather larger than a horse-bean. One of the testicles being felt, it is to be gently 

 torn by tlic finger away from its attacliments to the spine, and removed through the wound, the 



• " Poultry Book," p. 96. 



