Thanks all for your experience with CX from various hatcheries, and with various management styles. Please keep the comments coming!
I will be doing CX again, as the meat amount can't be beat, but have a few ginger broilers and red broilers coming from Murray McMurray this summer to see how they compare to the CX in terms of management, growth, and heat endurance. I can't raise CX during the summer and early fall here anyway because it gets too hot, so I might as well see how these others perform.
Here's an update on how my CX experience went with my 25 Cornish Rock Cross from Welp Hatchery.
Issues: Lost one at ~1 wk old due to a brooder issue (smashed it when trying to put in the 15 lb feeder, and feel HORRIBLE about it). So I started using two feeders - a trough feeder and a 15 lb round vertical plastic one, so that everyone would have enough feed trough space first thing in the morning - this helped with the feed aggression. One died of a heart attack about ~2 wks old (no signs or injury, just looked like it fell asleep and didn't wake up). Around 7 weeks, a male had his legs go out - sat on his hocks and pretty quickly couldn't get up again. I saw one that had prolapse around 8 wks, but when I went back to find it to isolate it, the prolapse must have gone back inside. At 9 wks one female fell onto her back after drinking her water, and couldn't right herself. Good thing I was outside and heard the ruckus or she probably would have died of stress. One randomly died at 8 wks, not sure why (probably heart attack), no signs of injury. So out of 25 chickens I processed 22. Pretty good I think.
Received them on 1/19/23. Fed for 5 days 24 hrs a day with the light on. Nurture Wise 22% Meatbird feed. Switched to 12 hrs on, 12 hours off until 4 weeks. They were in the brooder (4' x 32"x30") with a heat lamp until 4 weeks. I wanted to move them out at 3 weeks, but it was too cold and the covered run wasn't ready. By 3.5 wks the 23 chickens covered half of the brooder when lying down. I put food and water (5 gallon bucket with nipple waterers that I filled daily) at opposite ends of the brooder to encourage walking. I changed out all the shavings every single day (exhausting!).
At 4 weeks moved them out to the covered run (15'x10'). Changed to a 10' gutter feeder, with an inverted gutter on top to prevent feed scraping, and left the feed out 24 / 7. We had 12 hrs daylight, and they wouldn't eat in the dark, so I figured it was good enough and just kept the trough full. 23 birds needed two 5 gallon bucket feeders with horizontal nipples, and I had to refill these every other day.
At 5 wks they were the size of small broilers in the grocery store. I processed 5 into whole birds for roasting in the oven, and skinned and parted one.
At 7 wks they had almost doubled in size from 5 wks. Processed 2-3 more into whole birds for roasting, skin on, and then the rest of them I skinned and parted out.
Skinned and parted birds at 7 wks, 8 wks, 9 wks. Took me (one person) 1.5 hrs start to finish to skin and part out a bird and put it in the fridge. Took 2 hrs if I scalded and plucked it, and stored it whole, but even with the pre-scald bath I could only do a max of 2 birds before changing the scald water and reheating it, so there was some additional time needed there.
Hung them up on a tree by their feed to drain. After draining blood I gave each bird a butt bath (no matter what I did the poo would accumulate) with dish soap. Then skinned or scalded. Skinning was pretty easy, the hard parts were getting it started around the legs and slicing the pinfeathers off the wing, and getting the skin off the wings well. Scalding was easy as well, as long as I got the temperature correct. 145-150F, used a candy thermometer and outside burner with a 22 Quart pot. Once a pin feather came out easily I was done scalding.
Challenges: I thought I'd have more help than I ended up having. So it took a lot longer to get all of them processed than I planned. 1-2 birds an evening and 5-6 a day total on a Saturday. I did not have a plucker, or really a large enough cutting board. The weather was a problem because all my processing and parting was done outside and there were some warm days, but in general it was quite cold - there was pink ice forming near my cutting board one evening, so I decided to be done for the evening. The icewater coming out of the hose was an issue - If I had a source of warm running water I could've kept going. I have ideas for improving my setup, but I don't see how I'll get much faster without additional people to help. Cutproof gloves are a MUST for next time! So tired of cutting myself!
9 wk birds were so heavy I could barely carry them around by their feet, even after they were cleaned and gutted. I didn't weigh my birds, but I wouldn't want them to get much bigger - I don't think I could carry them around enough to process them. At 9 wks, they were just done, health-wise, as well, at least that's how it seemed to me. Also, after 7 wks, I was worried the breasts would be so big that if I roasted the bird it would not cook evenly, since the breast was so thick and the legs and back weren't, so I parted them out after that.
