Cornish Hens

[TheLiliesLoveChickens]

I got some cute little peepers at the store for eggs, and my husband wants to get into raising some chickens for meat. I also wanted to learn how to raise chickens from incubating eggs, so raising some for meat from eggs seems like a good opportunity to do that on a regular basis.

I read Cornish grow out quickly, but I read they’re difficult to raise them to adulthood to lay eggs, and/or they are bad egg layers. I read they become muscle bound.

Does anyone have experience raising Cornish, or Cornish crosses, to full maturity and breeding them?

P.S, this is not my picture. I just snagged it off the internet so I could post this question. If it’s under copyright, sorry. I didn’t make any money from distributing it.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I got some cute little peepers at the store for eggs, and my husband wants to get into raising some chickens for meat. I also wanted to learn how to raise chickens from incubating eggs, so raising some for meat from eggs seems like a good opportunity to do that on a regular basis.

I read Cornish grow out quickly, but I read they’re difficult to raise them to adulthood to lay eggs, and/or they are bad egg layers. I read they become muscle bound.

Does anyone have experience raising Cornish, or Cornish crosses, to full maturity and breeding them?

P.S, this is not my picture. I just snagged it off the internet so I could post this question. If it’s under copyright, sorry. I didn’t make any money from distributing it.

Cornish and Cornish Cross (CornishX, CX) are VERY different birds. Regular Cornish are able to actually live normally and lay and reproduce. CX, can't. If you starve them, then they may live for a few months, maybe a year, and may be able to be mounted and bred, but that just isn't fair to the bird at all.

CX are the meat birds at the store, even the little Cornish game birds. Those are actually just CX pullets at 3 weeks old about

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum from Louisiana, glad you joined.

I also wanted to learn how to raise chickens from incubating eggs, so raising some for meat from eggs seems like a good opportunity to do that on a regular basis.

Worthy goals. There are so many different ways to go about this. Some people do raise the Cornish Cross hens and try to hatch their eggs, often breeding the hens to a different breed of rooster. That's about the hardest way you can go about it. It is hard to keep the hens alive and get enough eggs to hatch. They are designed for meat, not eggs.

Some people try that with "Rangers". Rangers are still meat birds but were designed to grow a little slower. They are more suited to raising on pasture than the Cornish X. Rangers are easier but that doesn't especially mean easy. It is pretty common with the Cornish X and Rangers to buy the chicks and raise them. It's generally more economical than trying to hatch your own.

Many of us raise dual purpose breeds. They don't get as big as the others and grow a lot slower. They are not as efficient as the CX or Rangers as to putting on meat but you can get the eggs to hatch. Some of us even breed their own Dual Purpose (DP) flocks with this in mind. DP are birds that can be used as both meat and for eggs but are not as efficient as the birds that are bed specifically for meat or bred for eggs but are what our ancestors raised to eat. What breeds did you get for layers?

 

[CNJ]

I got some cute little peepers at the store for eggs, and my husband wants to get into raising some chickens for meat. I also wanted to learn how to raise chickens from incubating eggs, so raising some for meat from eggs seems like a good opportunity to do that on a regular basis.

I read Cornish grow out quickly, but I read they’re difficult to raise them to adulthood to lay eggs, and/or they are bad egg layers. I read they become muscle bound.

Does anyone have experience raising Cornish, or Cornish crosses, to full maturity and breeding them?

P.S, this is not my picture. I just snagged it off the internet so I could post this question. If it’s under copyright, sorry. I didn’t make any money from distributing it.

If you want to breed them you will need to feed them only once a day which is easier said than done. When they see you coming with their food, they will go ballistic and if you poke your head out the window to peak at them and they see you, they will go nuts. It takes conviction and will power to feed them once a day.

You can keep the feed in front of them 24/7 during the first 3 weeks and start by taking the feed out at night for a week and switch to once a day after that.

If you don't, they will develop obesity problems and eventually blow their guts out.

 

[TheLiliesLoveChickens]

Lots of great advice here! Thank you all! I will look into the Rangers. I saw them at the feed store, too!

 

[TheLiliesLoveChickens]

What breeds did you get for layers?

We got a mixed bag: Americana, Isa Black, Comet, Red Productive, Wyandotte and three I don’t know what they are because the feed store threw their extras in one horse watering trough they didn’t have labeled. But, they were all so darn cute in their different colors, I just took one of each

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I got some cute little peepers at the store for eggs, and my husband wants to get into raising some chickens for meat. I also wanted to learn how to raise chickens from incubating eggs, so raising some for meat from eggs seems like a good opportunity to do that on a regular basis.

I read Cornish grow out quickly, but I read they’re difficult to raise them to adulthood to lay eggs, and/or they are bad egg layers. I read they become muscle bound.

Does anyone have experience raising Cornish, or Cornish crosses, to full maturity and breeding them?

P.S, this is not my picture. I just snagged it off the internet so I could post this question. If it’s under copyright, sorry. I didn’t make any money from distributing it.

Yes.

Don't do it.
Cx are purpose built from protected lines to do one thing extremely well - put on weight very quickly, at high efficiency. EVERYTHING else is sacrificed in service to those goals. To do so, they need specialized diet as well.

They aren't hearty birds. They are disease prone. The extreme growth rates aren't good for long term health (like erecting a skyscraper on a foundation that isn't done curing....). They also aren't heat tolerant, and are particularly poorly suited to high heat + high humidity. You know, your state. I'm in the FL Panhandle, its pretty similar here.
With feed control and other management methods, you can successfully raise a few of a larger number of Cx chicks to an age where they start laying eggs - its close to 7 months in my experience. They aren't great layers. Not bad, but not great. Anyhow, from that point forward, you will be raising two flocks. One a flock of Cx offspring you hope will perform like Cx for table (they won't - some will, some won't - its very inconsistent, and each generation will be worse). The other a flock of Cx raised on a borderline starvation diet so they don't get so big that they can't successfully breed.

Even then, it will almost certainly be more expensive than simply buying Cx at the farm store - the commercial breeding of Cx enjoys economies of scale you can't imagine.

If you want to breed and eat your own, you need to settle on either a meaty dual purpose breed which you mprove over time, or make your own mutts (a long term project of its own which many abandon).