Do cornish cross lay a decent amount of eggs? I've never though of them as egg layers but we picked one up at the feed store a while back because she was cute. She died before she was old enough to lay but we were thinking of getting more for meat this time. was just wondering if they laid good too. also when they start laying, thanks everyone.
Most will never live to laying age because they die of heart and other problems caused by their enormous quick weight gain. I have heard of a few laying but I would buy a more suitable breed for egg production and keep them for meat. Henry
The usual Jumbo Cornish X Rocks are good for nothing but meat. They are extremely lazy and don't lay much (if they live to be 22 weeks old). By the way, Jumbo Cornish X Rocks are a hybrid and so will not carry the same characteristics into later generations. The mega corporations that sell these Jumbo Cornish X Rocks are in cahoots and will only sell the parent stock at thousands at a time for 4-6 dollars a bird. Most HATCHERIES can't afford to buy the breeding stock. The only way to make these corporations sell in reasonable amounts for reasonable prices is to buy meat birds like Timothy Shell's Pastured Peeper or the colored range broilers from J. M. hatchery. This would remove the demand for Jumbo Cornish X Rocks and so the corporations would either go out of business or lower their prices and ridiculous quantity requirements.
If you want them to live long enough to lay eggs, you have to seriously ration their feed...or not feed them at all. I know some here near me who laid, but they were all dead by a year old (or thereabouts).
I had heard of someone near me having a few of them for layers. I never checked back with them, but it seemed weird to me because theyre meat birds.
