Cornish Cross sexual maturity and can they breed?

[Bridget-Louisiana]

And are the males of these girls Cornish X's too? I was worried hte males might be too heavy to get up and do thier thing. Like the heavy breed turkeys are.
I do know not all make it very long. So far my (what I think is male) is doing well. No physical problems. But as large as he is at this young age, I suppose that could change.
I was going to butcher him soon if there was no chance of him being able to breed.

YES, you can cross breed the Cornish Cross. I kept 4 of my hens and cross bred them w/a Buff Orpington rooster. I think you need a rooster mature, BIG ENOUGH, to mount these girls. They are BIG! So we went out and purchased an incubator and our first hatchling was on Wed. We name him/her UNO, which on day three is starting to show dad's color. We are calling them Cornish-Orps. We also hatched one of our RIR eggs to compare to the chicks as they grow. Our newbie mistake was not saving the eggs and placing in the incubator at once. We placed them in 3 to 4 daily and now, we're getting staggered hatching. We had 2 hatch yesterday and 3 today and it will be like that for the next 30+ eggs to go. I am selling some of the fertilized eggs.

 

[Bridget-Louisiana]

In order to get a CX to breeding age and condition you'll need to literally starve it. If I were to consider trying to outcross a CX I would look at finding a restricted feeding plan that includes items that can help with the breed's endless hunger. Chard is very low in calories and high in bulk for example. People have crossed CX to Delaware to create the Corndel at one time. Too bad that didn't continue.

Personally I'm giving the Label Rouge Redbro breed a try. They claim to only be a week or two different than the CX and they live to breed just fine.

I fed my C.C. hens a reg. diet and didn't expect them to live long enough to lay. And they DID. So we mated my 4 C.C. girls w/a BUFF ORP. ROOSTER and had beautiful babies. They are about a month old now. Here's a pic of UNO, our first CC/BO cross hatchling, 19 days old.

 

[Poultrybreeder]

I fed my C.C. hens a reg. diet and didn't expect them to live long enough to lay. And they DID. So we mated my 4 C.C. girls w/a BUFF ORP. ROOSTER and had beautiful babies. They are about a month old now. Here's a pic of UNO, our first CC/BO cross hatchling, 19 days old.

I am going to do the same cross you did. Are they growing faster than a normal buff orp? Have a great afternoon and God Bless!

 

[Bridget-Louisiana]

I am going to do the same cross you did. Are they growing faster than a normal buff orp? Have a great afternoon and God Bless!

I can't say one way or the other. I've never raised BO's before. I purchased the rooster as adult. But the chicks are growing at a nice pace and have a lot of the BO's buff color.

 

[Poultrybreeder]

Thanks!

 

[Sara Ranch]

It's interesting to read the updates on this thread.

I am down to my last two Cornies. One female, one male.

The male didn't start trying to mate (that I saw) until March/April. They were born beginning/mid August 2017. Cornie King (yep, that's what I call him) wasn't able to mount his girls, even when the girls were laying down. HIs bulk and their bulk was just too much. The King ended up tearing out both of his "toenails" on his little toes. And I suspect, he was the one that injured some of his girls.

The girls had 1" long, horizontal and/or vertical slash marks around their rear ends. It wasn't until I had brought everyone in that I saw the King trying to mount them and realized HE could have caused their injuries.

Outside, the RIR had tried - unsuccessfully - to mount and to mate the girls. He could mount, but couldn't stay on or reach his destination. (Frustrated him so much that he had an anger management problem.)

My one girl laid her first egg a few days ago. Nothing since. I've tried to get a newly broody hen to lay on it.... scared it might be a double yoke. Wondering if it may be fertilized. (My young zebras [boy chickens] successfully mated with her and Baby. And her eggs have been "fertile." That's another story!)

The Cornie girl, Flappie, hasn't laid since. Her sister died a few days ago. When we did the open up and see, we were very surprised to find two egg yolks, but no shell. So we know she was close to laying...

These two cornie cronies will probably move to chicken heaven soon. The girl because she's not laying anything and nothing seems to be working. I can't feel an egg, but she should have laid something else by now. Nada. The boy cuz he can barely stand up on his two feet.

I've learned a lot from my cornies.

For the future....I would put the cornies with a flock as soon as possible or give them their own housing and pasture as soon as possible.

They are amazing foragers and explorers.

I'd put one of my gentle giants with them or a one of my zebra boys with them. The zebra boys are very light weight, very agile, very gentle, very kind, very submissive, and very quick. They don't hurt the girls. It's about release, not dominance.

It's great to know there are possibilities of cornie babies!

 

[Bridget-Louisiana]

It's interesting to read the updates on this thread.

I am down to my last two Cornies. One female, one male.

The male didn't start trying to mate (that I saw) until March/April. They were born beginning/mid August 2017. Cornie King (yep, that's what I call him) wasn't able to mount his girls, even when the girls were laying down. HIs bulk and their bulk was just too much. The King ended up tearing out both of his "toenails" on his little toes. And I suspect, he was the one that injured some of his girls.

The girls had 1" long, horizontal and/or vertical slash marks around their rear ends. It wasn't until I had brought everyone in that I saw the King trying to mount them and realized HE could have caused their injuries.

Outside, the RIR had tried - unsuccessfully - to mount and to mate the girls. He could mount, but couldn't stay on or reach his destination. (Frustrated him so much that he had an anger management problem.)

My one girl laid her first egg a few days ago. Nothing since. I've tried to get a newly broody hen to lay on it.... scared it might be a double yoke. Wondering if it may be fertilized. (My young zebras [boy chickens] successfully mated with her and Baby. And her eggs have been "fertile." That's another story!)

The Cornie girl, Flappie, hasn't laid since. Her sister died a few days ago. When we did the open up and see, we were very surprised to find two egg yolks, but no shell. So we know she was close to laying...

These two cornie cronies will probably move to chicken heaven soon. The girl because she's not laying anything and nothing seems to be working. I can't feel an egg, but she should have laid something else by now. Nada. The boy cuz he can barely stand up on his two feet.

I've learned a lot from my cornies.

For the future....I would put the cornies with a flock as soon as possible or give them their own housing and pasture as soon as possible.

They are amazing foragers and explorers.

I'd put one of my gentle giants with them or a one of my zebra boys with them. The zebra boys are very light weight, very agile, very gentle, very kind, very submissive, and very quick. They don't hurt the girls. It's about release, not dominance.

It's great to know there are possibilities of cornie babies!

 

[Sara Ranch]

Beautiful!

 

[raymond00121]

I had some i grew for meat and set free about 10 runts that were to small at slaughter time, they free ranged for couple months after that, they got big and more lean like a regular chicken. got eggs every morning in my planter which was very convenient. one of the males had a processed with of 18lbs all the others were over 10lbs

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

This is our first Cornish Cross / Buff Orpington cross. To our surprise, our 4 cc girls started laying eggs. So we bought a grown 3 yr. old BIG BO Rooster. He was able to mount these ladies and we have beautiful cross breed chicks. They are now about 6 weeks old. The chick picture here is about 18 days I think... We fed no special restricted diet as we NEVER expected them to live long enough to lay. View attachment 1373557

Hey! Wondering how these chicks developed. I'm curious if they were still fast growing meat birds in this second gen cross. Also, which hatchery were your girls from?