Black+White=Brown?

[Minniechickmama]

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Thanks again for your help Bo. I know you have worked this with your Brown Red Cochins, so you ought to know what you are talking about.

 

[Minniechickmama]

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Here is the gist of it... I hate the CRX. They taste fine, they grow fast, but they stink to high heavens and they do not act anything like a chicken. They are eating and pooping machines. I have raised them, I have 49 in a PVC portable pen now, but I hate having them. So, I have set out, like many others to try my hand and coming up with a strain that I can be happy with to eat that still produces a good carcass and grows reasonable well, and still ACTS like a chicken.
Originally, I thought cross my Dark Cornish hens with something else big. Then I did some homework and asked questions, and I found out I need to have a Cornish roo to give the breast I wanted from that breed to the other selected breed. So, I ordered some DC cockerels from McMurray. Then 'studies show'

that hatchery stock, especially in Cornish, really are not up to Standard in type. I do have quite a handsome and broad and heavy DC roo right now. He has size, but he lacks the breast and the overall thickness for a good Cornish. I love him, but he is never going in a show cage. I think he may be a good step, but not going to get me a final product. So, I was going to cross him with Delaware, Orpington and Giants. Realizing that Dels and Giants are slow growing breeds, I started to rethink this idea. Then I got this young man, who is growing like crazy!

He is 2 weeks younger than the WLRCs he is in with, yet he is about 2-3 inches taller at the back. I have to handle him more to see what kind of muscling he is putting on though. It may just be fast bone growth, but a frame is a good place to start, then add the meat, right?

I have an EE cockerel out of a DC/EE hen and my DC roo and he is pretty well built except he has legs like an ostrich. I also have some DCs I hatched out from SandS, and one looks like someone tried crossing in some Asil or Game of some kind he is all leg and a very horizontal body. So, if it were the Asil coming back, it got the legs and not the stature.

I am seeing some interesting things from just hatching out my barnyard mixes while I am building my pure breeding flocks. Some of them are proving to be worth adding to my meat pen. Perhaps I can get a green egg laying meat bird going here too LOL.

I don't know how some people do it, staying with just one breed. My husband asked, "Can't you just pick 6?" I couldn't get lower than 13! I am SO addicted. But rest assured, we are making sure they have comfortable accomodations. Here is the latest addition to the chicken housing and the freshly painted interior that will have some murals added to look like they get to sit under nice leafy trees even in the dead of the Minnesota winters:

The rafters are going to be a powder blue. There will be 9 breeding pens in this house, 4' X 12' and outdoor runs for each of equal or larger size. Then I plan to rotate them on 2-3 sections of pasture daily. I also have a brooder and banty house. I have also considered building long raised cages on the back wall for some of my bantams, with wood flooring not wire.
I am keeping heavy or at least large breeds around. I do have GP Hamburgs, but my oldest picked those and he is losing interest in chickens (he is 15 and has 'better' things to do), so I think they will be taking leave of our premises. They are pretty and fun to watch, but they fly really high and they are flighty acting, plus they lay a small egg which is not what most consumers are looking for when I have eggs to sell for eating. Keeping them would mean I would need to have a top on their pen and run. I am pretty sure I won't have too many of my other breeds getting up on the 8-foot dividers, but if I do, I will have to put netting up in there. Can't really see a JG getting that high without a boost.

The other thing about this meat project plan is to start caponizing some of my cockerels. I have gotten fairly good at sexing most breeds by their feathering in the first couple of weeks. Some you can't, I know. But that should help even a breed like Giants put on more weight and stay tender even if they do take longer to grow out. I am going to have plenty of WLRCs to put in the freezer in a month or so since I have way too many, and I am not even sure I am keeping any of these. I am starting to wonder how many have split wing. It could be just something about this stage of their development, but I don't remember my cockerels last year looking like they are drooping their pinion feathers all of the time. I don't think it is just the heat either, unfortunately.

Probably more than you wanted to know, but there it is so far.

P.S. I couldn't help but get a picture of that hen in the nest box, she won't get out! She is so broody right now, but I only have the one box in there and I don't want to have her hatching eggs in this pen. Maybe when she gets in the big house she can. I have a few like this right now. I let a Silkie hen hatch 3 chicks so she would get off the nest. It is so funny to watch, but one of the other hens pecked one of the chicks up and it was going to be scarred for life, then I found it dead in the waterer a couple of days ago. It was a Silkie X Sebright, so not a huge loss.