Cornish Game Hens

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What are their offspring like? What rooster did you use to produce them? I'm looking at doing a breeding project with Cornish Cross, and there's not much information out there on what they will produce. Do you have pictures of the offspring?

Sorry to go on a tangent, but I'm interested in this.

As for the original topic...

Cornish Cross chickens are made to get big, fast. If you start right from the beginning, you can make them eat right and excercise and they should live a while. If you feed them the way they like to be fed, (an endless buffet and no excercise) their muscle grows faster than their bones and organs can keep up, and they die from leg problems, heart problems, liver problems, lung problems....not pretty to watch. Since they are not bred for egg production, I would guess they do not produce as highly as an egg laying breed, and need more feed per egg. Now, if Cornish Cross is not what you are thinking of, and you are thinking of regular Cornish, aka Cornish Game or Indian Game...those are fine, they will get pretty hefty but are decent layers. I've got a bantam one.

Alright haha. Now I do think I'm going to try a cornish game hen or two. Everythings good in moderation so I'll work out a diet

my two girls got to that weight on straight free range, no feed. In fact they didn't start to break down until I penned them with the roo for breeding and had to feed them. The roo was too much for them as was the feed.

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Yep, probably because the feed was higher in protein than the grass/bugs they got outside. Lots of roughage is good for birds, but doesn't do as good a job of growing as specialized feed.

On topic again: I forgot to mention, if you have purebred Cornish those will live a normal lifespan and lay a decent amount of eggs. Only the crossbred meat birds grow really fast. Purebred Cornish actually grow very slowly, and can be treated like a regular chicken. They are somewhat uncommon, so if your birds were bought specifically for meat then you almost certainly have a regular, crossbred meat bird.