Crossing Cornish with others....

[newmaineguide]

My fiance and I are starting a little homestead. We are defiantly going to be keeping chickens. I am leaning heavily towards Faverolles because I have read that they are broody and that they mature early. I have considered Orpingtons, and Cochins as well. Ultimately I am looking for a breed that will go broody so that I can use hens as incubators for turkeys, and guineas too. Egg laying ability is not a big concern as I prefer duck eggs and will be keeping khakis or golden stars. Lastly, as most to the point of my post. I am looking for a breed that not only will go broody, but one that i can also cross with a Cornish. So I am wondering if anyone here has crossed their hens with Cornish roosters to get a resulting hybrid in the back yard. If so, what breeds? How did the offspring turn out?

 

[becky3086]

What kind of cornish? As far as I know, you can cross any of them but I too am interested to find out how the crosses worked out.
Becky

 

[newmaineguide]

Not sure about color. But defiantly a standard sized Cornish. I do not really care about white feathers. I was thinking that the white laced reds were a nice looking color variant. But so are the standard darks. I would not be opposed to whites though.

 

[greyfields]

I cross my Dark Cornish on many different hens. Best results, though, were crossing him on held back hybrid broiler hens. Many many threads on this in the first few pages here.

 

[dancingbear]

I've got some breeding projects of my own coming up, that I want to use a standard Cornish roo for. I'm having trouble finding a good quality Cornish roo. I wanted to get one from a breeder, rather than a hatchery, because hatchery stock so often isn't true to type, and are smaller than birds bred to stay true to breed standard.

Greyfields, is yours from a breeder or a hatchery? How big is your Cornish roo?

 

[Southerngirl]

That is our spring project too. We held back a broiler hen and are going to cross her with our Dark Cornish rooster. I don't mind the broilers but if I can get a home grown cross without all the mess that would be great too!

 

[greyfields]

Quote:
You point out the difficulty here. My Cornish all came from commercial hatcheries, so were probably selected along laying lines. My Dark Cornish rooster is gorgeous, but he's by no means a large bird. I intensely desire to breed or find a larger one. However, going to may chicken shows and fairs I've never seen a single standard Cornish chicken of any shape or color... just bantams.

 

[greyfields]

Quote:
My largest best growing crosses were all Dark Cornish with Freed Ranger hens.

I did grow a crop side by side with my colored range broilers. They had a 2.5 week headstart and weighed 1-2 lbs less than the broilers.

It's not an overnight proposition to convert from buying broilers to breeding your own. It's going to take years of work.

 

[Southerngirl]

Quote:
My largest best growing crosses were all Dark Cornish with Freed Ranger hens.

I did grow a crop side by side with my colored range broilers. They had a 2.5 week headstart and weighed 1-2 lbs less than the broilers.

It's not an overnight proposition to convert from buying broilers to breeding your own. It's going to take years of work.

I agree on the hard work part and it is sure worth it when the cast iron skillet is all fired up !!!

I may purchase some Freedom Ranger hens too to try this out. Thanks for the input as always !

 

[estpr13]

I've read that Cornish roos were very territorial and hard to work with. I've wondered if that isn't why the lady I got my Delaware roo x cornish hens crosses from started doing this cross.

Would there be much of a difference in using the cornish hens as part of the cross as opposed to the roo? Perhaps this is a genetics question?