what breeds to cross for meat?

Bossroo said:

Your current choice of breeds is NOT going to give you what you are seeking ... too long to mature, which will require much more of your labor , not to mention the added feed costs involved as well as housing, predator control etc. and still will not give you a satisfactory results. To save you time and MONEY... buy yourself some Cornish X birds , ask the hatchery for the proper protocol to raise them ( they are NOT your average barnyard bird ) and in 6-8 weeks harvest all of the birds which will yield you more meat in your freezer than any of the other " heritage" breeds would in 2 to 3 + times the age. You see, the Cornish X were selectively bred at the Universities by scientists over many years and funded with MILLIONS of $$$$s by the commercial hatcheries from thousands of breed combinations and SEVERE culling of the chicks and came up with an ideal procedure to produce several grandparent lines, then cross those chickens to produce the parents , then cross them to produce the terminal Cornish X for your eating pleasure . This process is patented and under lock and key at the commercial hatcheries. This crossbred bird is the most efficient converter of feed to meat in the shortest time of all chicken breeds out there, BAR NONE !

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aoxa said:

So, so tasty.

We free range our CX and butcher them at 12 weeks. This past harvest we had a couple roosters that were large breeds. Really large.. and they were a couple pounds lighter than the CX girls who were 6 weeks younger.


CX girls 12 weeks.


this is a mature Silver Pencilled Plymouth Rock. His sons went to butcher at 18 weeks. They weigh about 3-4 pounds, but look much different than the CX!

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AmericanMom said:

Our local feed store gave us 10 Cornish last spring, raised them free range, lil buggers wouldn't really range, the last few weeks we had to lock them out of the coop as they laid around the feeder all day... Next time we will butcher at 5-7 weeks depending on weight, the last 4 of this years birds were butchered at 12 weeks they were giants, one was packaged weight at 7 pounds!!! Way to much meat for just my husband and I.. I want a nice 2-3 pound bird....

I did buy some jersey giants, one ended up being a roo and we culled him at 5 months ( was deciding if we wanted to keep or not) he is a nice fat guy in our freezer but still only around 3 pounds.

Didn't know what we were going to do with that Cornish that was so big, we also started raising Heritage breed Turkeys and thought we had two toms and a hen, figured on butchering one of the toms for thanksgiving, much to our delight turns out we have 1 tom and 2 hens so the Cornish is being saved for Thanksgiving

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aoxa said:

You have to restrict their feed. We allow a good 6 hours of nothing at all to eat except what they find when they range.. and find they do!










ALL the white dots are around 4 week old CX chicks




a little older


about a week before processing.

12 weeks - video

a bit younger here

Note: By 6 hours of no feed, I am talking about during daylight hours.. not including 12 hours at night with no feed.

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AmericanMom said:

Love your set up!!! Yes, live and learn, we have no predation issues at our place save for the hawk from time to time, the door to the coop was rotten and removed and we never got around to replacing it lol... Live and learn, next year we will know better what the do's and don'ts are.

Got to admit, they are funny birds when they know food is at hand.

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Bossroo said:

Your current choice of breeds is NOT going to give you what you are seeking ... too long to mature, which will require much more of your labor , not to mention the added feed costs involved as well as housing, predator control etc. and still will not give you a satisfactory results. To save you time and MONEY... buy yourself some Cornish X birds , ask the hatchery for the proper protocol to raise them ( they are NOT your average barnyard bird ) and in 6-8 weeks harvest all of the birds which will yield you more meat in your freezer than any of the other " heritage" breeds would in 2 to 3 + times the age. You see, the Cornish X were selectively bred at the Universities by scientists over many years and funded with MILLIONS of $$$$s by the commercial hatcheries from thousands of breed combinations and SEVERE culling of the chicks and came up with an ideal procedure to produce several grandparent lines, then cross those chickens to produce the parents , then cross them to produce the terminal Cornish X for your eating pleasure . This process is patented and under lock and key at the commercial hatcheries. This crossbred bird is the most efficient converter of feed to meat in the shortest time of all chicken breeds out there, BAR NONE !

Click to expand...