Anyone ever outcross Cornish X with heritage Birds?

[Egg Snatcher]

Amazing birds! They look like they have great structure for a great carcass. As long as I kept on selecting for birds with good size and build would those traits be fairly easy to keep in my flock? Yes I would love to see the EE crosses! Thank you so much!

Your welcome! I’ll try to get some.

It can be hard to keep Cornish Crosses alive to get to breeding age. You need to restrict their feed or otherwise they original CX tend to eat themselves to death. I would not use a high protein feed like many people on this forum think is necessary for regular chickens. And instead of free feeding, restrict feeding them to certain volumes a few times a day. There are people on this forum that do that but I don't know the details.

Mine Cornish x and the offspring never were put on a feed restriction. And I let my Cornish cross girl free range. Never had a chicken eat it’s self to death, not saying it can’t happen, in my experience I’ve not had it happen.

when you cross them with heritage chickens you usually get mostly pretty fast growing and large growing chicks.

Agree. The chicks are huge when they hatch and grow fast.

But when you cross crosses those genetics are going to be really scrambled. (F-2's) You can get a pretty wide variety in all of their traits including size and rate of growth. Selective breeding can help you get more uniformity in your flock. So just like improving the meat qualities of a heritage flock, breed the ones you want to eat and eat the ones you don't.

Agree, when I crossed my F1 girls to my EE the chicks still hatched out huge, some grew fast and meaty while others grew slower, some being meaty some being built more like a regular chicken. I also agree with selective breeding, that should give you the traits that you want.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Mine Cornish x and the offspring never were put on a feed restriction. And I let my Cornish cross girl free range. Never had a chicken eat it’s self to death, not saying it can’t happen, in my experience I’ve not had it happen.

I'm not arguing with you at all. Letting them free range and find most of their feed is a lot different from feeding them a constant diet of 20% protein feed.

I did have a chicken eat itself to death. A Speckled Sussex cockerel. He had over 2,000 square feet to forage in and instead chose to stay by the feeder and eat. He was huge. I was planning on butchering him on the weekend but he died at 15 weeks, probably from a heart attack. He is one of the reasons I say anything can happen. You don't get guarantees.

 

[Egg Snatcher]

I'm not arguing with you at all. Letting them free range and find most of their feed is a lot different from feeding them a constant diet of 20% protein feed.

I did have a chicken eat itself to death. A Speckled Sussex cockerel. He had over 2,000 square feet to forage in and instead chose to stay by the feeder and eat. He was huge. I was planning on butchering him on the weekend but he died at 15 weeks, probably from a heart attack. He is one of the reasons I say anything can happen. You don't get guarantees.

That’s interesting.

 

[Egg Snatcher]

@ButtercupEnthusiast here are the Easter Egger X F1Cornishx
These guys are about 6-7 month old.

 

[Molpet]

Couple of the boys trying to fight.

 

[Skyeknight]

Mine Cornish x and the offspring never were put on a feed restriction. And I let my Cornish cross girl free range. Never had a chicken eat it’s self to death, not saying it can’t happen, in my experience I’ve not had it happen.

Can it be assumed that the insatiable hunger of the cornish cross will not be inherited by any outcrossed offspring? I am wondering if I should get a seperate brooder for future potential cornish cross F1 offspring or if they can be easily raised in the same brooder with my "normal" chicks.

Planning to cross them with an ayam cemani rooster and eat the male offspring while keeping the female offspring for further breeding.

 

[Egg Snatcher]

Can it be assumed that the insatiable hunger of the cornish cross will not be inherited by any outcrossed offspring? I am wondering if I should get a seperate brooder for future potential cornish cross F1 offspring or if they can be easily raised in the same brooder with my "normal" chicks.

Planning to cross them with an ayam cemani rooster and eat the male offspring while keeping the female offspring for further breeding.

It can probaby happen. Ive never had it happen. I raise my cornish cross F1 and F2 chicks with all the other chicks

 

[MysteryChicken]

I wanna use Slow Grow Broilers, like Rainbow Rangers to experiment with cross breeding. Think they'd be a better choice then the regular Cornish X/Jumbo. There's a slow grow strain of the Jumbo variation, but I'd rather use the rangers.

 

[Skyeknight]

I wanna use Slow Grow Broilers, like Rainbow Rangers to experiment with cross breeding. Think they'd be a better choice then the regular Cornish X/Jumbo. There's a slow grow strain of the Jumbo variation, but I'd rather use the rangers.

I will be going with that slower growing strain of the jumbo variation. In the Netherlands growing your own meat birds is not really a thing. So we can't just buy rangers, I don't even think we have those here at all. We do have heritage breeds that are equivalent to new hampsires and delawares in terms of meat. But I don't like those and since I will be outbreeding the amount of meat would take a hit. Ofcourse now the problem lies in keeping the CX alive long enough to lay eggs.

 

[Molpet]

Ofcourse now the problem lies in keeping the CX alive long enough to lay eggs

I did this by feeding all they could eat for 20 minutes 2x a day.... And lots of exercise.
Around 20 weeks she started laying eggs, a couple a week, for a few weeks before quitting for the winter.
Unfortunately it was a bad winter and she didn't get exercise. She had a heart attack at about 1 year old.
4 of her eggs hatched. 1 pullet who layed double yolks. I used 2 of the cockerels for breeding. One died at 18 months, probably a heart attack. The 3rd the hens didn't like so I ate him at 2&1/2 years.