Quote:
What I'm planning to do is , rather than keep sustainable population of several breeds at once, (during early stages anyway, until I see which combos look the most promising) is just keep standard Cornish roos, with several breeds of hens. That way, except for short periods here and there, (like when I have some young cockerels growing out for freezer camp, or even one or two for further breeding) keeping them separated won't be an issue.
The people who have experience with standard Cornish as part of the parent line for meat crosses generally say that C. roo over whatever-breed hen works better than the other way around.
The lack-luster egg production could still be an issue with the female offspring of these crosses, though. They say that the egg laying ability is passed on through the sire, rather than the dam, so you want a roo who's mother was a good layer, to pass that along to his female offspring. With standard Cornish that's hard to do, most of the hens don't lay all that well, though some are definitely better than others.
But for the initial crosses, at least, you'd have plenty of eggs for hatching, from most of the hens you might want to cross w/Cornish.
BTW, I have a few Dels, nice looking, vigorous, active birds, and they seem smarter than most chickens. But my roos are really aggressive. Not to me, but to other chickens. I saw my 3 roos surround and attack a chick one day, I saw them actually work as a team to do this, like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. The mom hen was right there and ran in before I could react, and put a quick stop to it. The chick was fine, but it was really kind of creepy. All the years I've raised chickens, I've never seen that particular behavior before. I've been watching them, and they pick on the smaller birds a lot more than any others I've ever had. I decided to keep my Del hens, and the roos are destined for freezer camp, this weekend. I don't want baby chick stalkers in my flock.
