Can you hatch your own Cornish Cross?

[Ridgerunner]

Crazytalk, I’d not believe that about the genetic dwarfs. It makes for a good story, but no.

You might want to watch these to see how it is actually done. It’s from the hatching egg side of the industry. This corrected a lot of my pre-conceived notions.

 

[stew1]

Them are some good videos ridgerunner. I know it wouldn't happen in a few generations, I said years. I may be wrong but you should get about 2 generations a year so 5 or 6 years I bet one could get it, or get pretty close. Look up leopard gecko wiki and go to the morphs section and you would be amazed at the number of combo morphs there are. Its just easier to sort them cause there are name and key traits to look for. Also breeders are usually willing to share the genetics behind them. They don't have anything like that for chickens that I know of and they want to keep it a big secret apparently. I wonder how much it cost to buy the grand parent stock to create the old famous Cornish cross? Now that I would give good money for.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You can certainly talk to Perdue or Tyson and see what they say, but I’d be amazed if you even get a response. They spent millions developing those flocks. Why would they give a competitor that start for any amount of money?

Besides, you would have to know what traits you are looking for in each of those four separate grandparent flocks. I really don’t expect them to share that type of information.

 

[stew1]

I agree they would never tell or sell but it would be sweat.

 

[CrazyTalk]

Crazytalk, I’d not believe that about the genetic dwarfs. It makes for a good story, but no.

You might want to watch these to see how it is actually done. It’s from the hatching egg side of the industry. This corrected a lot of my pre-conceived notions.

Ridgerunner - here's a study comparing egg laying and offspring performance between genetic dwarf dame lines and standard dame lines.


The get better fertility, and better efficiency from dwarf lines, with no real decrease in offspring performance:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21597080

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks for correcting me on that. That’s about as clear as mud isn’t it? It took many readings but I think I can follow what they are talking about though there are some things that seem contradictory.

Body weight as a function of chick weight was not significant. However, chick weight was significant when included in a model with egg weight, suggesting that significant differences in BW at 50 d could be attributed to both egg and chick weights.

What the heck does that mean? Chick weight was not significant, yet it is.

If you follow one of the links to the right, it gives dwarf dam egg weight and chick weight were just a little lower than the eggs from standard hens, 67.3 grams egg weight for standard and 63.0 for dwarf about 94% smaller.

I think what it is saying is that the weight gain per gram egg weight (but maybe chick weight factors in somehow) is the same per gram no matter which group you took the chicks from. At 50 days, which is probably butcher day, the dwarfs should be 94% the size of the ones from the standard which in the face of it doesn’t sound good, but maybe you save enough in feed to make up that size difference and profit margins are better. For a hatchery that hatches 1,000,000 chicks a year, a 1% difference in hatch rate is 520,000 chick a year.

The more I learn the less I know.

Again, thanks for that.

 

[CrazyTalk]

It's definitely complicated - there's a lot going on. I think the big thing is that this isn't something someone is going to be able to replicate/sort out these birds in 10 years with a backyard flock. They're the product of 50 years of research and selective breedings, and billions of birds. This isn't the realm of breeding geckoes or tropical fish - this is large scale biotech.

However, 10 years of breeding and selecting in a backyard flock with get you a pretty decent meat bird. They're going to grow slower and eat more to get to weight than cornish cross - but that doesn't mean they're not useful.

 

[mom of silkies]

I have Black Australorp Cornish rock cross eggs in my incubator right now!

I can't wait to see what hatches! I restricted my cornish rock cross hens food so they wouldn't get so big and they started laying, so I put some eggs in my incubator!

 

[JJSS89]

If I've said it once, I've said it a dozen times. For a back yard meat bird, just get a small flock of red laced or dark Cornish and breed for the fastest growth rates. Huge birds are tougher to butcher and cook.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

I've been searching for pure large fowl white cornish birds all winter now. My persistance has paid off and now I have several great contacts and options. If your wanting a cross bred that will grow good,have great meat qualities and be able to reproduce on their own,,consider crossing a cornish and a white or barred rock. I've spoken to several owners of large hatcheries including Kurt Welp and Ideal in Texas,,If you start with full grown mature rocks and cornish you can then have your own strain of cornish rocks in the freezer in 6 months time,and keep the best back and breed them to each other. The cornish x-bred birds are under proprietorship and Tyson as well as Perdue does own the parent breeding stock but from what I've been told,these birds are not a "pure" variety anymore.Each piece of the genetic package is a combination of birds bred into the mix for one specific reason.