Cornish crossed with other breeds

[Coop deGrace]

Everyone knows about the iconic Cornish x Plymouth Rock, aka Cornish X or Meat King. But has anyone tried different Cornish crosses? I have a group of white Cornish that I plan to breed for meat birds, but I also have a group of Orpington/Marans crosses that I plan to breed for dual purpose birds. I am wondering what results people may have had from crossing Cornish with other dual purpose heritage breeds?

 

[Molpet]

This year I have a dark Cornish rooster over various hens. He had troubles at first getting eggs Fertilized. I usually harvest around 16 weeks. His first offspring are just that so I am not sure yet but they don't look as good as my normal mixes... but the feathers are different and I may be surprised....heritage roo over CX pullet 4th generation is my normal mix.
@Redhead Rae has some dark Cornish and cochin mixes she harvested

 

[Redhead Rae]

I have Dark Cornish X EE crosses. They are a bit lighter and not as meaty as my pure Darks. I mainly bred them to see if I can get some neat looking light olive eggers. I'll have to get pics.

 

[Tre3hugger]

heritage roo over CX pullet 4th generation is my normal mix.

Mind elaborating on this a bit?

 

[Molpet]

Mind elaborating on this a bit?

I kept a CX pullet, used a random mixed heritage roo I got off FB. Hatched 3 cockerels I used over br and bjg hens. I keep breeding the offspring .... Cockerels dress out 5 to 7 lbs at 16 weeks.
Diet and exercise to keep a CX alive long enough to get eggs. Snowy winter wasn't her friend and she died before she started laying again almost a year old

 

[Tre3hugger]

I kept a CX pullet, used a random mixed heritage roo I got off FB. Hatched 3 cockerels I used over br and bjg hens. I keep breeding the offspring .... Cockerels dress out 5 to 7 lbs at 16 weeks.
Diet and exercise to keep a CX alive long enough to get eggs. Snowy winter wasn't her friend and she died before she started laying again almost a year old

much appreciated

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum. Glad you joined.

The Cornish X is not a simple cross between a Cornish and a White Rock. Those breeds were used in the initial cross to develop the Cornish X back in the middle of the 1900's (dang, that makes me feel old) but it took generations of selective breeding to develop that cross into the meat bird we have today. Do not expect to get anything close to the Cornish X with any cross of any two dual purpose birds without generations of selective breeding. Don't get your hopes up too high.

I personally have not used the Cornish in my crosses so I can't speak from experience with them. Others on this forum have. The better stock you have to start with the better your results. Cornish tend to add more breast meat to the cross but poor egg laying. How much depends your initial quality of bird. Your Marans/Orpington cross should add reasonable size and fairly good egg laying, again depending on the individual bird. In general you should get results in between the two parents.

Since your hens are crosses, when you breed them you can get a fairly wide difference in individual offspring. It depends on which genetics actually get passed down to he individuals. Don't expect a lot of consistency in the offspring when you make that cross, but if you selectively breed the better of the offspring you can improve on that and before many generations should have a bird that comes close to your goals. But you have to carefully select which chickens get to breed.

Good luck with it. It sounds like a fun cross.

 

[Coop deGrace]

Hi, welcome to the forum. Glad you joined.

The Cornish X is not a simple cross between a Cornish and a White Rock. Those breeds were used in the initial cross to develop the Cornish X back in the middle of the 1900's (dang, that makes me feel old) but it took generations of selective breeding to develop that cross into the meat bird we have today. Do not expect to get anything close to the Cornish X with any cross of any two dual purpose birds without generations of selective breeding. Don't get your hopes up too high.

I personally have not used the Cornish in my crosses so I can't speak from experience with them. Others on this forum have. The better stock you have to start with the better your results. Cornish tend to add more breast meat to the cross but poor egg laying. How much depends your initial quality of bird. Your Marans/Orpington cross should add reasonable size and fairly good egg laying, again depending on the individual bird. In general you should get results in between the two parents.

Since your hens are crosses, when you breed them you can get a fairly wide difference in individual offspring. It depends on which genetics actually get passed down to he individuals. Don't expect a lot of consistency in the offspring when you make that cross, but if you selectively breed the better of the offspring you can improve on that and before many generations should have a bird that comes close to your goals. But you have to carefully select which chickens get to breed.

Good luck with it. It sounds like a fun cross.

I'm not actually trying to re-create the Meat King, as I actually really don't like them. Just curious as to what other people's experiences have been. The orpington/marans crosses were a good size at 16 weeks but have proven very difficult to determine the gender at that age, so I haven't processed any as I needed to keep replacement hens. Will be interesting to see how well they do compared to the pure cornish. The first gen crosses came out remarkably uniform.

 

[Molpet]

This year I have a dark Cornish rooster over various hens. He had troubles at first getting eggs Fertilized. I usually harvest around 16 weeks. His first offspring are just that so I am not sure yet but they don't look as good as my normal mixes... but the feathers are different and I may be surprised....heritage roo over CX pullet 4th generation is my normal mix.

I harvested 2 of the dark Cornish over my meat mutts today. One was black (bigger) and the other was black with red. (Smaller). They are 17 weeks. I have one barred of my meat mix that age, but I couldn't catch him, yet. I hopefully will by tomorrow so I can compare.

But here these 2 are

Black cut up, neck included

red

 

[Weetamoo93]

I was contemplating getting a Cornish Cock for batches of terminal crosses with my Partridge Plymouth Rocks, actually, so I'm interested in others experiences with crossing the Cornish. I know I wouldn't get the Cornish X chicken, and that wouldn't be the goal. I was just hoping for that hybrid would give me a little extra for the pot.