Another GREAT Mt Healthy Review.

[D'Angelo N Va.]

Now, that's a good deal. I am going to get some this year also I think from them. I don't care if they are all cockerals. I will put them in freezer camp and eat lots of chicken all winter. I work out a lot so I need lots of protein, also I have lots of cookouts and they will come in handy. I also see another person on talking about Mt. Healthy and they got 200 and 100 of them were females..Now, you really can't beat that.

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
I personally dont usually raise cockerels to eat for myself at least but I may soon but I will be using Cornish X hens as the mothers. But if I were going to raise the regular breed roos to eat, I would butcher them at the point to where their bodies have filled out, but their necks are still slim if you know what I mean, thats the point where I've always thought to myself that they would be a good time to butcher a roo when he has filled out but isnt quite fully mature.

And I have also heard that about breeders saying if you must buy from a hatchery, Mt Healthy is the best choice. You would think though with as few breeds as they have, it wouldnt be too bad of a job to get acutal pictures of pairs of their stock to use on their site instead of the artist rendering of the breeds they carry.

 

[jmc]

Clint, I believe, there are pics of their stock in the flyer they send out each year.

btw, I know that at least some--if not most--of their birds tend to run a bit larger than those from other hatcheries. They do NOT want to 'corrupt' their lines. I know this for a FACT, moreover.




How can you breed a cornish x female to anything? aren't they too big to breed (much less lay) by the time they are sexually mature? Or maybe the girl will drop dead before she can mate.

What I'm getting at clint is, your plan of breeding BR and corn x female (if that is what you in fact plan on doing) sounds VERY appealing to me. Maybe you could say a little more or point me to a thread of yours where you go into this...........

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
I've mentioned it a couple times before on here and there are others here doing it as well, Brunty Farms is one that I know of, he is crossing a Buckeye roo with them. But yeah thats a common misconception about them but if they are raised basicly the same as would would any other chicken, they still grow to be pretty heavy but are are more fit for farm life. I done it a couple years ago and raised them just like a normal chicken like I said and breed them with BO, RIR and a BA roo and with them being Dom White masking black, all of the chicks come out white with black spots but they still grow pretty fast and much meatier than a regular chicken and I'll they would get to a butchering size at around 4 months where I would say it would take around 5-6 months for a pure bred roo. Now I probably wouldnt keep these hens for more than a year but you can keep them fit and healthy enough to get some breeding out of them. What I plan to do though is probably breed a Barred Wyandotte roo to the CX hens, this will give me all white F1s but they will only carry one copy of Dom White and then breed those back to the Barred Wyandotte and that would give me half barred and half white chicks and then work back to some more CX hens probably until I feel like I have what I want but basicly I'm wanting to make Barred Broilers that will grow faster and I can butcher some myself but probably sell a lot of them at the auction. And I may do some experimenting with other roos on them like Light Sussex, Marans, and Partridge Brahmas if I have some at the time.

I'll try to find the thread about using the CX hens in meat bird projects.

ETA Here it is https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=301996 Be sure to look at the update on page 13. He has a good comparison where he is measuring their breasts with his hands and you can see that the CX X Buckeye has a much wider breast than the pure buckeye. But I got pretty much the same results with the ones bred a few years ago and I'm hoping to get a little start on breeding them again.

 

[ghulst]

Limit feed cornishX and they will breed good. That is how the comercial breeders do. They cut the protein also.
Use a Barred Moran and you might get barred chicks. I have had coppers and they were large.
Mt Healthy does some vent sexing. They also buy chicks.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Raised on a farm back in the '50's, my mom and grandmother pointed out the roosters they wanted for butcher each Saturday in October.
My childhood chores included care and feeding of the 200-250 straight runs we raised out from chicks each May.

When the cocks were showing major beginning signs of comb and wattle development, betraying the onset of their maturity, they got "pointed out", snagged, and the assembly line of cleaning was put into force. We'd clean 50-60 each Saturday until they were all gone. Doing the math in my head now, that would have been 16-19 weeks. Of course, these were pure White Rocks. Each strain marks it's own time.

 

[jmc]

thank you, gentlemen