Cornish roo + Marans hen = ?

[SJ]

First to wall0stone, What make the cornishx grow so quickly is that as stated the cornishx comes from 2 bloodlines which the parent stock have been select over many year for several traits that we see in the hybridized offspring the cornishx. Two of these traits were a high feed conversion efficency and a high feed intake(how much will an animal eat given the oppurtunity). When your selecting for a high growth rate you also need to select for both of these. The bloodlines that give us this cross are basically propietary secrects of the larger commercial producers.

TO the original query, will the a cornishroo over maran hens produce a good broiler? Well that depends. Sure marans, RIR, and BO for that matter are all good size dual purpose(DP) birds that should lay enough eggs to produce plenty of potential broilers. If you planon using a the standard cornish and not the CornishX please keep in contact as i am attempting a cross between the cornish and: BO, Delaware, Indian River (DelawarexNHR), NHR, RIR, and SLW.

BUT!

(im laughing about the mental image)and its a big but, if your going with a Cornishx roo consider this.

Can a CornishX roo do the deed?

I'm assuming your not going A.I. so the question is does your cornishx boy have it in him to be a brood cock? Some might say the body shape and temperment of his breed would not make for a very good brood cock. That doesnt mean your boy will have low fertility or be too docile to even have interest in girls, or his big breasts will be too big and get in the way so much that all he does is get an A for effort on a hens back and just fall off, it just means he has shown some nay sayer if he succeeds.

Assuming he does you can now ask will his offspring be broiler material?
What makes a good broiler?
4 quick thoughts on that - And would the offspring have these traits.
1.A meaty carcass(DUH!)- Sure but it wont be as meaty as thier dads.
2.Fast growth(A young bird is a tender bird.) - Maybe, but probably nothing less than 12 weeks to butcher weight for many of them.
3.Uniform developement(Everybody is ready to be butchered at the same time.) - No.
4.A Calm and Docile bird? (Will the boys be ready to be slaughtered before they are ready to slaughter each other?) Theres no way to tell.

 

[BigDaddy'sGurl]

Quote:
I have fallen in love with one of my meat chicks and decided to keep him...because he is just so personable and friendly and funny! But I am concerned about what will happen when he becomes an adult (he was hatched 02/27/2011) and tries to fulfill his "roosterly duties" as it were, lol...good choice of description here lol

 

[Totalcolour]

Quote:
Crossbreeding doesn't work that way. The Cornish Rock hybrid has half its chromosomes from one breed and the other half from the other, but when forming sperm or egg, the chromosomes separate randomly. So let's say, for argument's sake (I don't know the real number) that chickens have 40 chromosomes arranged into 20 pairs. Each sperm or egg will have one member of each pair, but WHICH member is completely random. In addition, chromosomes often undergo crossover, where each chromosome exchanges parts with its pair-mate. A simplified explanation is that the pairs look like this: II. When they cross, they look like this: X. At the point of intersection (could be near the top, middle, or bottom...completely random), they break, and reattach onto the other. This is why crosses don't breed true.



~Christopher

Actually, crossbreeding DOES work that way. Each "child" will inherit half of it's gene from it's male parent and half from it's female parent. However, since there are a lot of genes that make up the species, there can be thousands of variations; but "each individual" will still have half of it's genetic material from each parent. That is why, even thought there are only a handful of landrace jungle fowl, there are hundreds of different descendent varieties of chicken.

Yes indeed, the chromosomes do separate randomly - and add into the mix, heterozygous/homozygous, autosomal genes, lethal genes and incomplete dominants, to name a few (let's not get into the modifying genes and those that we don't even understand yet, and you end up with thousands of possible variations in colour pattern, number of toes, base body colour, ear lobe colour, size etc......)The list goes on, and on.

BUT, with only two parents, the chicks will still have half from the female and half from the males. So, "STATISTICALLY, if you have a Heterozygous brown eyed male Bb and cross it with a Heterozygous Bb female, you will end up with 25% HOMOzygous bb (blue eyes), 50% HETEROzygous brown Bb, and 25% homozygous brown BB. You won't be able to tell at this point though the BB from the Bb unless there are some other genes involved. Which of course there would be because your chicken has a whole ton more genes to express.

There are whole books devoted to chicken genetics, such as "The Mating & Breeding of Poultry", first published in 1920.

And I do agree that my first answer was simplistic, but then to answer it fully would take several "chapters", and I'm sure TexasCochinLady asking the question didn't want that much information.

Also, she didn't say Cornish/x, she said Cornish, my mistake.

(While it wasn't chicken DNA, I worked for over ten years studying DNA with scientists at Amgen for my work as a medical illustrator/animator) I doubt that their medical/legal department would have approved my work if it wasn't accurate - but then it wasn't about chickens