Buff Orpington x Cornish Rocks

[Omniskies]

After eight months and 420,000 bags of feed - while free ranging - my Cornish Rock hens finally laid a single frozen egg yesterday during our ice storm.

We brought the egg up to the house and cracked it open the rest of the way and saw the bullseye. The young, scrappy Buff Orpington rooster we have in with the hens has been romancing the ladies.

I'm really excited. It's taken forever to get these giant things to start laying and I was concerned that forcing them to free range would keep them from laying eggs at all until spring.

Now we'll be gathering the eggs that we can find in time and tossing them into the incubator. With a buff x white cross we should have sexlinked chicks.

If we can get the chicks to hatch out then I have to figure out what to cross them to. I think the Buff Orpington genes will help them be a fast-feathering bird, but will shrink the breast size.

Any thoughts?

 

[brooster]

Instead of breeing cornish rocks have you just considered crossing a White rock with a white cornish?

 

[Omniskies]

I have and plan on making broilers (late) this year with Dark Cornish on White Rocks. I already know roughly what that cross will produce. This experiment is more for fun. In the end I'd like to have a nice strain of chicks that grow at least as fast as most White Rock strains with a larger breast. And something that breeds at least mostly true. Then I'll play around with crossing that to a Cornish, Dorking, or White Rock.

 

[brooster]

Sounds like a fun project.

Lots of baby chicks!

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

420,000 bags of feed! Are you joking?! How many chickens did that feed??

 

[Omniskies]

In the end it fed six

Ok, so it was a slight exaggeration. It felt like the birdzillas were eating a bag of food every few hours.

 

[Byrdj]

Keep us posted and send pics of the chicks if they hatch. What color do you figure the down will be on the males and females? It will be interesting if you can sex them from the Cornish Rocks x Orpington.

 

[Omniskies]

Since it's buff over white the female chicks should be buff and the males white - so dark yellow and light yellow.

I found a double-yolk egg earlier today. I almost thought it was a small goose egg before cracking it open. I'm not sure if it's from the same hen or one of the others, but it was in the same nest as the first one.

Next week I'll start saving eggs for incubating and see what happens. This week I'm hoping they'll all lay a couple of eggs. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of plump little chicks by March. Then I'll be pairing the CornishxRock hens up with a different rooster breed to see what I get.

 

[Byrdj]

So will the adult males from the Cornish/Rock x Orpington cross be white and the girls be buff colored?

Will it work the same way with using a RIR rooster over a Cornish/Rock hen?

 

[Omniskies]

It should work out that way with a Rhode Island Red rooster. I'm hunting around for a Gold Laced Wyandotte rooster to cover the hens. Sooner or later I'll need to find a way to get a nice big Standard Cornish roo for them.