Breeding Cornish Cross Meat Birds

[goosemama]

We can buy Cornish Cross chicks to raise for meat at many hatcheries but has anyone tried to breed them on the farm? I just bought 15 Dark Cornish chicks and 15 White Plymouth Rock chicks and plan to use the WPR roosters on the Cornish hens (and vice versa) to see what develops as their offspring.

I have read many use the White Plymouth Rock or Delaware as roosters on the Cornish hens. Anyone have the secret to developing these fast growing meat chicks?

 

[Fred's Hens]

They are proprietary, bred from proprietary stock, probably a four way cross of birds that really aren't any specific "breed" that we'd probably recognize any more. That's what 50 years of poultry genetics companies, involved in selective breeding for a billion dollar world wide industry gets you.

Short answer? You can't make them.

 

[Narragansett]

Fred is right. The term Cornish Cross is completely inaccurate, false and misleading, Cornish Cross, Rock Cornish Cross et al haven't been used since before WWII.

 

[extraordinaryfowl]

We can buy Cornish Cross chicks to raise for meat at many hatcheries but has anyone tried to breed them on the farm? I just bought 15 Dark Cornish chicks and 15 White Plymouth Rock chicks and plan to use the WPR roosters on the Cornish hens (and vice versa) to see what develops as their offspring.

I have read many use the White Plymouth Rock or Delaware as roosters on the Cornish hens. Anyone have the secret to developing these fast growing meat chicks?

As the two above answers said, you wouldn't be able to create clones of the commercial Cornish cross used today in the commercial meat industry. But that doesn't mean you won't make some good meat birds by crossing your cornish and rocks, which as also mentioned above is what the commercial industry at one time long ago was based on.