A Cornish Cross (Breeding?) Journey

[D1N0]

Unrelated to the main topic of your post, but what is it you did there with the chicken legs of the processed chickens? How did you tie them together with another piece of skin, and can you cook them this way in the oven?

Looks interesting to me and I've never seen that done before!

You can make them into a stew

 

[D1N0]

You can make them into a stew

Along with other organ(also dogs are crazy for dry liver and more of the organs)

 

[DemeterAD9]

Also cornish-cross can't breed

And why not? The only thing stopping them is their size and that mainly applies to the roosters as they would have trouble mounting the hens. That and if they are not kept on feed restriction and exercise they don’t often make it to sexual maturity anyways. Unless you are saying they don’t breed true, in which case that is correct.

Chunky has not been on feed restriction but she is quite active for a Cornish cross and in far better shape than her buddies were. Her comb and waddles are getting red and growing, the young cockerels have taken an interest in her as well. Which ultimately led to the early demise of 2 particularly persistent 12 week olds. I can’t have Chunky getting too stressed in this hot weather we’re getting. Most of her adult feathers have come in now, just working on some wing feathers from what I can tell. She’s not great at foraging but she tries.

 

[Molpet]

Also cornish-cross can't breed

the males are problematic with the large chest, but my pullet had fertilized eggs....I guess she didn't get the can't bred memo


other people have bred them also
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/raising-large-table-birds.68027/

 

[D1N0]

Well it not a pure I'm talking pure breed of cornish cross, also you can get cornish cross by breeding cornish and Plymouth?

 

[D1N0]

And if you could then each offspring will be less and less the parent

 

[D1N0]

Bc they are already so inbreed

 

[DemeterAD9]

Chunky is 13 weeks old today and surprisingly has started squatting for me when I went to pet her this afternoon. I gave her tail a little shake to make her stop and she did the whole feather fluffing thing and flapped her wings. Chickens are weird. Seems far too early for that but maybe it is because the cornish cross grows so fast they also mature early? She is being kept with the main flock which has my main man, a blue copper maran, and a bantam cockerel. I've only seen the bantam try to breed her but or course he can't really reach. When I let them out to free range I've been keeping Chunky locked up otherwise the 8 other hormone crazed cockerels chase her around. I plan to butcher 5 of the cockerels pretty soon so maybe I can start letting her out with the rest afterwards.

The heat has not been very great for any of the birds but Chunky seems to be doing okay so far. Other than that I'm starting to feed more 16% pellets, they eat it like candy so I use whatever sort of pellet feed I have on hand as scratch.

 

[DemeterAD9]

Chunky next to her new boyfriend, he was the best behaved of the bunch and I prefer a shorter comb over a single comb. I haven’t seen the blue copper maran trying to romance Chunky but he has pushed the cockerel off of her. The cockerel is from a SLW hen (also shown) and either a BJG roo or the blue copper maran. If I had to guess I’d say his dad was the BJG as there is no hint of coppery leakage that I can see. He isn’t super persistent in chasing the girls but when he does he at least tries to dance for them.

Still waiting for that first egg.

 

[Skyeknight]

If I had to guess I’d say his dad was the BJG as there is no hint of coppery leakage that I can see.

I would guess this too, he seems to lack the dominant trait of feathered legs that marans have.

Still waiting for that first egg.

In this thread a CX started laying at 17 weeks old.