best hatchery to purchase dark cornish?

taxidermist

Chirping
5 Years
Mar 16, 2014
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hello I posted this question under a different category and did not receive any answers so I figured a good place to start would be here. I am looking to start a small backyard flock and I would like to add some dark Cornish chickens. What is the best hatchery to order from? I don't expect show quality birds but would still like some attractive birds. I would like to keep some on hand to raise for meat and I like that they are a hardy breed that are good foragers and mothers. Ive read that Mcmurray hatchery's birds are good layers but are small? Maybe this was someone's opinion? I've read that ideal and cackle have nice large birds but I have no experience with hatchery's or this breed. Any input is greatly appreciated!
 
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Hey taxidermist.
well I have been lurking around this forum for about 3 years and read you post and I had to register to reply, so here goes. Last year I ordered 5 Dark Cornish roosters and 12 White Rock hens to breed together in an attempt to raise my own cross for meat. the reason for 5 roosters was to pick the best one of the five for breeder stock. I ordered them from Cackle hatchery and I am very pleased with the birds, both the Rocks and the Dark Cornish for the most part turned out to be big birds. I butchered 4 of the roosters this past Saturday and they were fully filled out,( I didn't weigh them ) they looked just like the Cornish x meat birds that I have raised in the past except they were 8 months old. I will be putting eggs in the incubator in about 2 weeks from now to make sure the eggs will be fertilized buy the rooster that I kept. Hope this helps you decide where you get them from, Cackle Hatchery were great to deal with and I will be using them again.
 
thanks for the reply jerry.

i know there are more folks on here with experience with dark cornish. id like to hear some more hatchery bird reviews. which hatcheries have birds that best represent the "standard" for dark cornish.
Mcmurray advertises their birds are hardy foragers and docile but they dont have any pics. a quick google search of mcmurray dark cornish , i found a pic posted by a customer. the rooster looked more along the lines of a standard game than a dark cornish. he had very vibrant colors and lacked the stocky build of a cornish. no doubt it had cornish in it, but its not the bird i had in mind when i decided to order some dark cornish.

a friend of mine has ordered several breeds from Meyer hatchery so i decided to look them up. their pics of dark cornish more closely represent what i feel the "standard" for a dark cornish is. but i have no way of knowing if that was a pic of their brood stock or just a random internet pic because the same pic pops up in several places on a google search. i may try to contact them for some further info.

any advice, references or personal experience with dark cornish chickens and hatcheries to choose from would be greatly appreciated. i know sometimes hatcheries have their own "strain", but i would like to order some that closely fit the "standard" of a hearty meat bird with a stocky build, great mothers,fair laying capability and protective.
thanks
 
That's a good looking bird. Nice broad chest and wide stance.He's definetly cornish but he seems a little different than the true "standard". He stands a bit taller and has more vibrant colors, legs Seem a bit long and although he's stocky he's not quite as square as the standard. No doubt he's a good looking bird but I do see the difference everyone talks about between a hatchery bird and a true"standard".
 
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Hey taxidermist.
well I have been lurking around this forum for about 3 years and read you post and I had to register to reply, so here goes. Last year I ordered 5 Dark Cornish roosters and 12 White Rock hens to breed together in an attempt to raise my own cross for meat. the reason for 5 roosters was to pick the best one of the five for breeder stock. I ordered them from Cackle hatchery and I am very pleased with the birds, both the Rocks and the Dark Cornish for the most part turned out to be big birds. I butchered 4 of the roosters this past Saturday and they were fully filled out,( I didn't weigh them ) they looked just like the Cornish x meat birds that I have raised in the past except they were 8 months old. I will be putting eggs in the incubator in about 2 weeks from now to make sure the eggs will be fertilized buy the rooster that I kept. Hope this helps you decide where you get them from, Cackle Hatchery were great to deal with and I will be using them again.

I would have to agree, with getting multiple chicks. I got six straight run DC chicks, lost one so far. I have one chick out of the remaining, that twice the size of the rest. My recipe for Cornish X meat birds is just the same.
 
You may have read my posts about McMurrays stock being smaller, that is the experience I have had with mine though I haven't had any DC from them, it does seem some breeds are "bred down" worse than others. I will say my McMurray white rocs are probably the poorest examples I have from them, they lay tiny eggs and the hens are quite small, I wouldn't bother breeding them with anything, however you may have better luck with the DCs hard to say. If I were going to go into a breeding mode for meat birds I would try to find a breeder with a fairly established line, like you say, not show birds but close to the traditionally accepted standards of the breed, I too would like to do this at some point.

I don't know where I saw it, could have been on here or maybe another website, but there was a pic of someone's plain hatchery DC rooster then a pic of one they got from a good breeder, the hatchery rooster more resembled a fat/stocky (normal chicken shape) round bodied hen or rooster, the one from the breeder stood tall with heavy wide legs and a broad muscular chest, that is the rooster I would want for breeding not the mass produced hatchery stock. Problem is good breeders are harder to find and more expensive than the hatcheries. I would recommend if going with a hatchery to get as many birds as you can handle at your place to start with since they are relatively cheap and then cull down to your best examples of type and size for your breeding project. Otherwise if startup cost isn't a big issue go ahead and get stock from good breeders and skip the whole process of trying to breed up good breeding stock.

Cackle has a video on youtube of their breeder flock, gives you an idea of what to expect from them though I have a hard time judging the birds from a flock of like birds with nothing else to compare size etc, here is the link:

 
Jerry, do you think the cross birds you raised go to the same carcass size as the commercial broiler? It obviously took longer in the home bred ones but I am curious as to the actual final result. I don't care if they take longer, if they still get to be a fairly massive carcass I will be quicker to try this too. By comparison to your rooster, assuming he is a good sized rooster, your white hens look a fair amount bigger than my Mcmurray rocs.
 
Hey blucoondawg,
I haven't raised any of the cross yet gonna fill the incubator in about two weeks, but I can tell you that the rooster and the hens are nice sized birds and I'm sure I will be very pleased with the offspring. My Dark Cornish rooster is just as big and filled out as the biggest CornishX rooster I have ever raised, on the other hand the White Rock hens are nice size to but they are not as filled out as the CornishX hens if you know what I mean. Hope this helps answer your question.
 

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