White Cornish: Building a Quality, Sustainable Flock for Meat and More.....

[KoopOnTruckin]

Well, no luck with the final few eggs in the incy. Here's a photo of the 5 that hatched, 4 silver and 1 yellow. I put red zip-ties on the Pen A's and blue on the Pen B's, and I'm also web-cutting in case the bands fall off.

 

[Fat Daddy]

Thanks Tab, I have always used straight start and grow. It's 20% protein. I have had feather picking once and a while. But it's always when I stack them in too tight. Sometimes I hatch myself out of brooder space... I have the hatches spread out a bit better this year thou... I just had 7 out of 8 hatch today and plan on setting one more batch... There are a couple OEB in there too...

 

[Fat Daddy]

Yes but not really unless we are talking over a very long period of time. The Punnet square addresses the probability of what each independent fertilization event could produce. Breeding split with split there is a 25% probability it could be LL, 50% probability Ll and 25% ll. The probabilities from the Punnet square can really only be applied when a large number of fertilization events occur simultaneously from one coupling. Each egg in a clutch has only a 1 in 4 chances of being white. There is no statistical relationship between each egg.

Agreed.... Just like the likely pullet to cockerel ratio would be 50/50. But we have all had those large swings either way in individual hatches. But in large enough samplings it's always gonna be close to 50%...
Add in the fact that a "pure" bird is hypothetical at best, well it's easy to see how the square is flawed before the first mating. But it works to a extent and is the best way I know of explaining the probability of Matt getting white birds from his flock. I have worked the squares on lavender Orpingtons and the ratios came out pretty close. Also tried it with coturnix quail and white chukar. The ratios came out with in reason even with the muddy coturnix.

 

[Fat Daddy]

I wouldn't add dark Cornish into my whites. But Matt has different goals than I. The white gene, both dominate and recessive, will be covered the first year no matter what. So it will be a several generation deal to get them breeding 100% white again. Again, from here it gets a bit above my pay grade. But I do have several years of experience to fall back on. I'm gonna guess they will likely be dominate white gene birds that cover red. The recessive whites tend to cover black. I'm pretty confident in this because when you find pet quality white Cornish, about 25% of the cockerels will show a rusty red "bleed", usually on their shoulders, just as they get their last molt. But sometimes presents as a rusty freckle as they feather out. For some reason the pullets never the last molt bleed... If the breeder knows the lineage. And is honest about it. It almost always turns out that there is dark Cornish or WLR in the recent back ground of the birds. My first whites, as well as some purchased eggs had exactly this heritage. This is why I culled the entire "pen C" the first year of this thread. The pix below are several years old and is how the domainate white gene birds, from a recent dark Cornish cross will feather as chicks. They hatch with yellow or brown down, and domainate white covers red, so they show the rusty bleed as they feather out. This fades with every molt.

By the time they get their final molt, they will be a pure white bird. But once and a while a recessive will hatch showing silver down, and show a black bleed as they feather out. Recessive covers black... This too fades with every molt till the chick is pure white by 12-14 weeks old.... these chicks were color culls and sent to my meat pen a couple years ago. But they hatched with the silver/gray down of recessive white gene birds. I keep lots of pix and record a lot of useless data, but it keeps me outta the bar.....

 

[JRNash]

I find it interesting, and I include myself, how many people will try and "make" their own bird. Some of the first birds I bought were hatchery dark cornish. I wanted WHITE cornish. To say the birds were a disappointment is an understatement. I had one rooster that had above average width
(for hatchery stock) but had a tail like an ostrich. He also had a couple of white primaries. I had hoped to breed to the "White" plumage. At around 8lbs
A barred owl figured he would make a good dinner. Once I started doing the research I figured out real quick without knowing more about what I was starting with I'd never be able to predict an outcome. I read somewhere that it takes like 6 generations of "back breeding" to get back to a 97% pure strain of what you started with. At first glance it doesn't look too bad. That unknown 3% burns the house down.lol

 

[JRNash]

I started with a meat flock, I love chicken and never get tired of it. The rest of the family.....not so much.
So then I transitioned to a primarily egg flock. My wife and mother in law sell the eggs. I get tickled at my mother in law she is 84,still works two days a week and is the ultimate hustler. These were the eggs I had to wash last night. I make sure any of the older folks I hear about get all they want no charge. We don't do enough for them. Now I'm on the process of building new pens to isolate my diffrent breeds. OCD finally kicked into overdrive and I want to start improving my birds.

 

[JRNash]

FD, my worst nightmare is imagining seniors having to choose between food or medicine. I gave a perfectly good car away 20 yrs ago when I found out a lady was trying to pay me instead of getting her medication. It was a horrible feeling that I've never forgotten

 

[Fat Daddy]

I looked at my 10 week olds today too. They mostly have pearl eyes now.... 8 week olds are still blue.... The two oldest ones in this pen are 10 weeks. The rest are 8 and 9...

 

[Fairview01]

K

I will end up with a 50 x 200 pen. Small corner coops with a fenced run parallel with the pen that way I can utilize pen as another "wall"

Well I'm going to have to work on a much smaller scale. My wife is not that understanding. At 40+ chickens my wife put her foot down and said I couldn't buy any more chickens. Less than 48 hours later she's setting 30 some eggs I received in the mail. I reminded her she didn't say anything about eggs.

So this is what I'm going to build. 4x6 pens. The sides are 2x10s. 10' sticks of 3/4" pvc held tight with conduit straps. If necessary I could build a couple in a day. Technically I could spilt it down the middle and have 2 breeding pens with trios and each bird would have 4sqft of space.

 

[Fairview01]

Thanks!
Then hopefully, I can convince them to let me keep at least one roo and one hen so that we don't have to buy more chicks next year!
Or even better, get the chicks now, from a hatchery if not from a feed store. let them grow, and hatch out replacements for the next year and eat all extras, leaving just enough to restock the next year. I would love that!

Zach,

Are you in high school yet? If so I would wander down to your AG Dept and talk to the Vo Ag/FFA advisor. As an Ag teacher myself, we can be very persuasive in helping you get a project going.

If you're not there yet I would suggest an active 4H club. A quality 4H club will have the suppport of the local extension representative. Get active with these organizations as appropriate and show your parents your commitment to educating yourself first.

If you want it bad enough you will find a way to be successful or if it isn't, a million excuses to explain your failure.
Learn from this forum and this thread. There is a Cornish group on FB. Submit a request to join and see if there are any members in your area. If so see if one will become your mentor.
You can ask for chickens or you can demonstrate to your parents you deserve them. It's hard for a parent to deny their child something they know they deserve.

Good luck. Continue to learn and have patience.