Bad Genetics?

[Buster52]

Yeah, well, as I said before... some of us on this board actually like chickens, Boss.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

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Meaning if you jump through hoops you can get most of them to live to the ripe old age of 8 weeks without keeling over from a heart attack. They might live 10 if you stretch and are willing to risk losing a few more. Very few would live much beyond that except a few relative runts.

My heritage birds, I feed them when they are out of feed, water them when they are out of water, open the coop or tractor each day, gather eggs, once in a blue moon clean the coop, and that's pretty much it. The rest they take care of themselves.

There are advantages to both the hybrid beasties and the heritage breeds. It is a mistake to try to pretend they are the same. The advantage of the X bird is that it gets big fast on relatively little feed. That's pretty much it. All the rest, advantage heritage. They are hardier, forage better, live longer, require very little care, and (most importantly in my view) taste much much better.

Oh, and the Cornish X is neither sustainable nor a breed. It is a hybrid that relies heavily on a completely unsustainable factory farm breeding system and must be shipped in each season as opposed to bred and raised on the farm.

That's funny, I didn't have to jump through any hoops with my cornish X last year. I processed them at 9 weeks and didn't have a SINGLE one die of a heart attack and didn't have any gimpy or crippled ones either. I did the same you did. Fed them, watered them, and let them forage. They were awesome at catching all the crickets in the yard. They ran all over my acre of land looking for bugs. I lost 1 early on to a respiratory issue.

I'm sorry, but what's the advantage to living longer? You're going to process them anyway. I could see if you were raising them for breeding, but not everyone does that. As long as we're judging a whole breed by our individual opinions, I'll go ahead and say heritage breeds take much longer to reach a decent size, eat much more feed getting there, and have a less-than-desireable carcass. I'd rather have a 5 lb chicken with more meat than bone, not the way it is with heritage breeds. Plus, you can probably raise twice as many cornish in the time it takes a heritage breed to reach a decent size. My sister got three meals for her family out of one of my cornish. She bought a FR and barely eeked out two.

I like my cornishX. I can raise free-range pastured birds in 8 weeks with a great feed conversion ratio. It already costs more to raise your own birds than it does to buy from the store, but I feel good knowing I'm providing my family with humanely raised pastured meat and doing it for a pretty darn good price.

And I love my chickens. Not sure why people assume cornish X growers don't like chickens. Makes no sense to me.

 

[Buster52]

But aggieterp, I said they grow fast and get big on little feed. That is their strength.

But that is their only strength. We can't on the one hand tout that strength, but then pretend they don't have weaknesses. They clearly do. Even your comment that they must be "managed properly" is a tacit admission that they are not as hardy as heritage. They clearly are not. They are fickle birds that don't handle heat well and can die of heart attacks at very young ages. Even very experienced growers sometimes lose large percentages of their stock to the common CX ailments of CHF, heat stroke, and limb problems. I have friends here in Oklahoma who stop raising them in the heat of the summer because they know their losses would be unacceptably high. I've yet to lose a heritage bird to the heat.

You can't have your cake and eat it to. Tell me they get big fast, but don't tell me they can do everything a heritage breed can. They clearly can't.

And the not liking chickens thing was a comment to Bossroo's frequently repeated commentary that raising chickens year round is somehow some kind of unbearable burden. It isn't directed at most CX growers, because most of them don't use that argument. If cheap meat I don't have to work hard for is my primary goal, I might was well head to Walmart 'cause ain't no way I can raise a chicken as cheap as they sell it.

None of this is meant as a criticism of those who choose to raise Cornish Cross. As I said, they do have their strengths.

For me, however, and many like me, their weaknesses far outweigh their strengths. My personal ethics or choices are my own. They aren't meant to make you feel guilty about yours.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

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It all boils down to what you want from your birds. Personally, it's not hard for me to manage CX so there are not losses. But, I'm also in MD, not somewhere like the deep south. I also feel like heritage breeds "advantages" over CX are useless, IMO. I personally don't need a bird that can win races (

) or survive long enough to be a breeding bird (because they're certainly not needed long enough for that.). I don't see what else heritage breeds can do that would benefit my personal production system. I've found that CX free range just fine and forage well for me. I like how they pluck easily and they have a very good meat:bone ratio.

The whole point of the thread (and article) is that you can't just blindly dismiss them because you "assume" they're only for factory farm production.

Thanks for the interesting debate, everyone.

 

[dancingbear]

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OK, you don't want to breed your birds and raise chicks, many of us do. Many of us prefer not to be forever and ever dependent on hatcheries for new chicks every single time we wan to raise some chickens. Many of us want chickens around as layers, as well.

I personally don't care if you prefer to raise nothing but CX's the rest of your life. But if something unforseen, unexpected, and catastrophic were to happen, and you could suddenly no longer get those hatchery chicks, and you had no other chickens, and no way to get any because EVERYBODY had nothing but CX's, so that all other breeds became extinct, (which is what would happen, if people STOPPED RAISING THEM, maybe the most rabid CX enthusiasts haven't considered that, or don't care) what would you do? I realize this is not extremely likely, (not impossible, however) but it goes back to the idea of sustainability.

Oh wait, I guess there'd be Leghorns, too, since they seem to be the other bird that has your approval.

You need biodiversity in order to have a long term sustainability. Mono-cropping, whether animals or plants, is a very bad idea. You never know what problems may arise in the future, and what genes from which variety may be needed to overcome those problems.

The idea that any animal or bird "doesn't need to live long enough to breed", and having any sort of sustainable system just isn't compatible.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

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OK, you don't want to breed your birds and raise chicks, many of us do. Many of us prefer not to be forever and ever dependent on hatcheries for new chicks every single time we wan to raise some chickens. Many of us want chickens around as layers, as well.

I personally don't care if you prefer to raise nothing but CX's the rest of your life. But if something unforseen, unexpected, and catastrophic were to happen, and you could suddenly no longer get those hatchery chicks, and you had no other chickens, and no way to get any because EVERYBODY had nothing but CX's, so that all other breeds became extinct, (which is what would happen, if people STOPPED RAISING THEM, maybe the most rabid CX enthusiasts haven't considered that, or don't care) what would you do? I realize this is not extremely likely, (not impossible, however) but it goes back to the idea of sustainability.

Oh wait, I guess there'd be Leghorns, too, since they seem to be the other bird that has your approval.

You need biodiversity in order to have a long term sustainability. Mono-cropping, whether animals or plants, is a very bad idea. You never know what problems may arise in the future, and what genes from which variety may be needed to overcome those problems.

The idea that any animal or bird "doesn't need to live long enough to breed", and having any sort of sustainable system just isn't compatible.

Um, they are hybrids, which mean there is more than one breed that go into making them. The offspring may not live long enough to breed, but obviously the parent breeds do. That is sustainable. I never said I think people should ONLY raise cornish and leghorns. Good grief, my layer flock is a rainbow of different breeds.

I'm simply saying I agree with the article which says the idea that breeds like CX and leghorns only do well in factory style production is simply not true.

For you, heritage breeds work well. That's great. For me, I prefer raising CX because the qualities you like about heritage breeds simply aren't needed by me. And honestly, the idea that every breed of animal needs to be maintained is silly. Not specifically chickens, but for other livestock as well. It's great that they have fans that continue to breed them for the love of the breed, but those that do raise heritage breeds don't need to "look down" on those who choose to raise better growing/producing hybrids/modern breeds.

And if like you said the whole cornish x breed (including parent breeds) is wiped out, I'm sure we'd go back to raising heritage breeds until another hybrid could be developed.

Like Buster52 said his comments weren't a criticism for folks who raise CX, my comments and the article aren't criticisms of those folks who raise heritage breeds.

 

[Bossroo]

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Just where did you get that idea ? Sooner or later most of us here KILL chickens. So all of us , including you don't like them.

 

[dancingbear]

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I'm not looking down on anybody who raised CX's for meat, (I've done so myself, and decided they aren't what I want) or keep modern layer strains. I have to agree that not all breeds need to be preserved. There are some, that frankly, I don't see why anybody bothers with them at all, other than perhaps as a curiosity. My point is that we need a variety of breeds, (this also applies to plant species) the larger variety the better, in order to have a diverse gene pool to draw on. Heritage breeds often have traits such as disease resistance, hardiness in different climates, etc., and it's not hard to see how this could be useful.

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That's not exactly what I meant, I guess I wasn't clear. I didn't mean CX's being specifically wiped out. I meant something more along the lines of something catastrophic, (like if that caldera in Yellowstone blew up and wiped out half the country) and commerce as usual were impossible for a long time to come. Or some other bizarre thing occurred.

If nobody had DP's/heritage birds anymore, like I said, because everybody decided to go with just CX's and leghorns, pretty soon there'd be nothing but leghorns and a few LH/CX crosses.

Not really expecting such a thing to happen, I'm just saying that putting all your eggs in one basket is not such a good idea.

I'm sure you've heard of the Potato Famine in Ireland, long ago. They'd become dependent on potatoes, and they only had ONE variety. When it was hit by blight, there was nothing left. Had they been growing dozens of different varieties, some would have been blight resistant, or blight immune, and there would not have been nearly as many people starve to death. That's not the only time in history that something like that has happened, and with our modern ways of depending on mono-cultures, it's only a matter of time until it happens again, perhaps with wheat, perhaps with certain animal species, who knows?

I'm glad to know you have a diverse layer flock. If something weird happens, you'll have something useful at hand.

 

[dancingbear]

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Just where did you get that idea ? Sooner or later most of us here KILL chickens. So all of us , including you don't like them.

You don't have to dislike an animal, or even be indifferent to it, to slaughter it for food. I like my animals. I treat them well while I have them. The extra roos are food. My layers usually stick around until they die of old age, unless I sell some. Liking chickens doesn't mean you dote on them endlessly and keep them forever as pets. (Though there are some who do that.)

BTW, my kids welcome me warmly, too. But that doesn't change their living situations, or my health problems, or cover the expense of travel. What kind of chickens I keep, or even whether I have chickens at all, has nothing at all to do with how much I do, or do not travel.