'The capon ceases to crow, the comb and gills do not attain the size of
those parts in the perfect male, the spurs appear but remain short and
blunt, and the hackle feathers of the neck and saddle instead of being
long and narrow are short and broadly webbed. The capon will take to a
clutch of chickens, attend them in their search for food, and brood them
under his wings when they are tired.'

It would naturally be expected, on the analogy of the case of stags, that
when a young cock was completely castrated all the male secondary
characters would be suppressed, namely, the greater size of the comb and
wattles in comparison with the hen, the long neck hackles, and saddle
hackles, long tail feathers, especially the sickle-feathers, and the
spurs. As a matter of fact, the castrated specimen usually shows only the
first of these effects to any conspicuous degree. The comb and wattles of
the capon are similar to those of the hen, but he still has the plumage
and the spurs of the entire cock. Many investigators have made experiments
in relation to this subject, and most of them have found that complete
castration is difficult, and that portions of the testes left in the bird
during the operation become grafted in some other position either on the
parietal peritoneum, or on that covering the intestines, and produce
spermatozoa, which, of course hare no outlet. In such cases the secondary
male characters may fee more or less completely developed. Thus Shattock
and Seligmann (1904) state that ligature of the vas deferens made no
difference to the male characters, and that after castration detached
fragments were often left in different positions as grafts, when the
secondary characters developed. In one particular case only a minute
nodule of testicular tissue showing normal spermatogenesis was found on
post mortem examination attached to the intestine. In this bird there was
no male development of comb or wattles, a full development of neck