Making your own Broilers????

[Promiselandfarm]

Question?? If white rocks grow to just a pound or two lighter than the cornish, other than time to kill and feed cost would it not be better to grow those?

 

[floridachickenman]

how would black giants x cornish work out?

 

[FutureChickenMan]

Quote:
black giants grow really slow as do cornish. BG's have a large skeletal structure that grows out first. So it's gonna be a while before they've got any meat on them. Now, if they're your pets and free range a lot making feed a non issue, than thats a different story.

The meat birds we see have been line bred for 50 years or so to get to where we are.

I'm going to attempt some crosses myself, but I'm starting with a Barred Rock roo and dark cornish hen. The biggest I've got of each. I'll give this a try if my cornish hens ever get around to laying. Meanwhile my leghorns, ee's, RIRs and barred rocks have been laying for quite a long time now.

 

[professor-yellow]

Glad to see another post on this subject. Greyfields has inspired me to play with crosses, since I have done pretty well with meat rabbits and ducks.

I have:
White Rocks (roo and hens)
delewares (roo and hens)
Standard Cornish roo
2 Black Broiler crooses (hens)

The delewares drow so fast compared to the WR and Cornish I had to give them a try.

All are still away from sexual naturity but I kept the largest hens for crossing with the cornish. The others will be used for purebreds, taking the largest and fastest growing chicks for further meat crossing.

They are still great egg layers so its really ok to raise fro eggs.

The cornish roo will have 6 hens and the other straight breeds will have 3 to 5 hens apeice.

I will be incubating sometime in October and will keep the meat group posted on the progress.

 

[dancingbear]

Professor-yellow, that's similar to what I plan to do during the next year or so. I'm going to stick to Cornish roos, though, at least for starters. I'll be watching eagerly to see your results!

I'm happy to see that there are quite a few people doing this sort of thing.