caponising surgically is illegal and with good reason so many so called " back yard " chicken keepers thought that they would attempt this in the past and many birds suffered slits in thier abdomens and infection along with those attempting it removing the wrong bits that rightly so it was outlawed,, then some bright spark thought of injecting them with the " pill". this was a small amount of the female eostrogen in a tablet that was put in a brass syringe then shot into the neck of the bird .. after 2/3 days this had the effect of making the bird eat more put on more wieght and STOP crowing this effect usualy lasted for about 12 weeks ( more in some birds) the bird made what i can only descibe as a yeeeeerrrrrrrrkkkk .. noise .. yes you guessed it i have done it it with birds myself when a "young un" this was also outlawed as some practicing keepers did not give the cockerals the neccesary 4 weeks free of the effects to allow the eostrogen levels to dissapear and included the offal in the sale of these birds . it was pointed out to me that the necks and livers should be discarded when processing ,and tested birds where found to be in the food chain if memory serves ..big brother gave loads of scientific twaddle that most folks couldnt understand about the pills effects . and then banned the practice again rightlly so in my opinion// if you wish to fatten non commercial meat birds for the table i suggest you just bring them up on growers pellets and slaughter at 16 weeks ....but why bother you can get meat birds as chicks for as little as 50p each sacks of growers at £8.50 each slaughter at 16/18 weeks or when the last bag of feed runs out ........here endeth the munty lesson