Cornish over New Hampshire

[Dr.Dale]

The thing with them is they won't breed true but with culling for fastest maturing first and second year you'd have fixed well your dual purpose line of birds.

Do you think that they would start breeding true for production qualities after a few generations?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Breed only the best of hatchery stock and cull hard breeding only best of 1st generation you'll see consistency in 2nd generation. Cull hard and breed best again and you'll have set the line well.

Being hybrids they have an enormous genetic diversity so can be closely bred for many generations without fear of losing vitality due to inbreeding. 1st generation will be all over the place in respect to growth and body type. This is where your attention to culling and selection of next generation breeder is critical. Think in terms of trio breeding- small pen with cock and two hens only to collect hatching eggs from. It will be obvious which are best and stick to that, don't breed so so birds to have more eggs to hatch. Breed the best pair or trio and hatch every egg instead.

Check out the link Selecting for Meat and Rate of Growth when opening the page below:

https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/chicken-manual

 

[Dr.Dale]

Being hybrids they have an enormous genetic diversity so can be closely bred for many generations without fear of losing vitality due to inbreeding. 1st generation will be all over the place in respect to growth and body type. This is where your attention to culling and selection of next generation breeder is critical. Think in terms of trio breeding- small pen with cock and two hens only to collect hatching eggs from.

Oh, that is fantastic advice. I hadn’t considered that.

I use the “spiral” clan mating system with three clans for my heritage birds. But with the diversity I wouldn’t have to start that initially. I could do arbitrary trio mating for a couple of generations, and then transition to the clans when I have more consistency and hence less diversity.

 

[ijon]

I crossed a Freedom ranger with a Dark Cornish and got a a very heavy hen.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

You could go five generations of mating offspring onto themselves before using spiral or line breeding program.

 

[Chickenheadmate]

Has anyone tried a Cornish rooster over a New Hampshire hen for a backyard meat bird? I was thinking that I could keep a flock of dual purpose birds mostly for eggs, but with a Cornish rooster for the occasional batch of meat. The NH seems like a good candidate for early maturity with the Cornish for meaty breasts.

Did you ever get to do the cross?

 

[Dr.Dale]

Did you ever get to do the cross?

No, it looks like I won’t be able to try it any time soon. The plan changed a little to accommodate my wife’s preferences. She has decided that she really likes white Plymouth rocks. So we will do a flock of 18 white rock hens, 1 white rock rooster, and 1 dark Cornish rooster. We plan to hatch about 120 birds per year, keep 6 or so of the white rocks to replenish our layer flock, sell some, and eat the rest including all of the hybrids.

Since the hybrids will be dark Cornish over white rock the cross should perform well as meat birds (not like factory meat birds, but still good), and they will be easy to distinguish from the white rocks. But it won’t be as interesting a cross since so many other people have already done it.

 

[aliciaplus3]

No, it looks like I won’t be able to try it any time soon. The plan changed a little to accommodate my wife’s preferences. She has decided that she really likes white Plymouth rocks. So we will do a flock of 18 white rock hens, 1 white rock rooster, and 1 dark Cornish rooster. We plan to hatch about 120 birds per year, keep 6 or so of the white rocks to replenish our layer flock, sell some, and eat the rest including all of the hybrids.

Since the hybrids will be dark Cornish over white rock the cross should perform well as meat birds (not like factory meat birds, but still good), and they will be easy to distinguish from the white rocks. But it won’t be as interesting a cross since so many other people have already done it.

It's always interesting when you are working with birds. Several of us seem to.enjoy hearing about the different crosses and how they are doing.

 

[Chickenheadmate]

No, it looks like I won’t be able to try it any time soon. The plan changed a little to accommodate my wife’s preferences. She has decided that she really likes white Plymouth rocks. So we will do a flock of 18 white rock hens, 1 white rock rooster, and 1 dark Cornish rooster. We plan to hatch about 120 birds per year, keep 6 or so of the white rocks to replenish our layer flock, sell some, and eat the rest including all of the hybrids.

Since the hybrids will be dark Cornish over white rock the cross should perform well as meat birds (not like factory meat birds, but still good), and they will be easy to distinguish from the white rocks. But it won’t be as interesting a cross since so many other people have already done it.

Can't wait to hear from this experience

 

[Mesa]

Any updates?