Cornish Cross Culling Question

[greenhorn]

I was thinking about getting some meaties from Meyer because they are less expensive than Townline but after reading this thread I'll stick with Townline.

Their birds do great for us. Yeah we lose a small percentage but never had a problem with small birds or mass death.

We used to keep them with our egg birds but had problems the last batch because of some new birds. They like to eat the feathers from the broilers then it turns into pecking and blood. Not good.....

I do think that the gentle egg birds did help to motivate certain meat birds to get out and enjoy the run but many just hang out in front of the feed or water and get little to no exercise regardless. The egg birds also seem to make the broilers have to work harder for their food due to feeder competition.

The bad thing is that the eggs don't taste as good when the birds are eating high protein feed.

 

[SowdersHomestead]

I'm almost to the end of raising my first batch of meaties. I purchased 15 from Meyer. 1 was DOA and 3 others died within the next 36 hrs. I live in south east TN and it was a 3 day trip for them which most likely attributed to the early deaths. Since then they have grown and feathered with no problems. Due to the distance I probably won't order from them again but I would recommend them to anyone. I have a local hatchery that I can pick them up from here.

I followed the sticky note at the top of the meat bird section on how to raise them. They are small probably due to improper protein intake. The best way to raise these birds is separate from the others.

I hope your next batch is more successful.

 

[Old Homestead]

I raised 8 cornish x in a coop with three barred's and an aseel , they were not as active as the others but would forage when i would remove the feeder and throw scratch out for them. culled four the other day they dressed out to about five pounds each, sounds like the trick is to keep them with other more active birds. ps. they were purchased at a local feed store.

 

[therisingers]

I have heard conflicting stories and when we got our meat chickens I went with barred sexlink cockerels and they were great. Only lost two, very early on, out of 15. Since everyone that I talked to said that the CornishX weren't worth trying, we didn't. I didn't want to spend that much on them, just to have them die off on me. We got online and didn't read much good about them so we decided against them. I am glad that some of you are having good experiences with them. We always use Estes and not sure what their policy is but we used a tractor for our sexlinks and they all dressed out nicely and were pretty nice meat chickens. I was happy with them. Now we just have to harvest our two last Buff Orpington roosters in a few days. Then it's down to our hens (and two roosters that we are keeping) and our ducks and turkeys....I sure appreciate you guys here! Anytime I Google anything about poultry? They always send me back here. So now I just come here FIRST. God bless ya'll and happy poultry-ing. hehe

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Sounds like a amino acid or another nutrient deficiency to me. We've raised several hundred Commercial Broilers from Meyer over the past 5 years and have have no out of the ordinary issues with any of them.

Jim