Crossing Cornish with others....

[Omniskies]

We might show up to the Sedalia show. Sometimes I show rabbits up there and I think poultry are the day after. Who knows? I may break down and try to show poultry. It'll depend on how brave I'm feeling.

Conveniently enough, the second time I'll be in St Louis will be October 3-5th. Usually we stay late in St Louis on Sunday night, but we may be able to make exceptions depending on how far away you are from St Louis.

 

[Ryu]

I used to raise Rex and English Spots! I won two BOB (Rex) and one BOV with my black English Spot doe my last year showing (I became allergic to them and had to stop showing).

Which makes me a little nervous about the Sedalia show. I hope my eyeballs don't explode!

The other show is Cape Girardo (SP?). My sister is maybe meeting up with some Dutch breeders there.

Oct. would be great.

My best hen (Fiona) is just finishing her molt and is in with Diesel an exhibition rooster, and I have gotten three eggs! There are three young hens in with them as well, one is laying--I vent marked them today so I will soon know which one it is and start saving to hatch.

Ethyl is in with Dually, both exhibition birds--they are both molting, so I don't know when that pen is going to get going. Ethyl is a sweet hen to humans, but she does not like Diesel, Dually is the only rooster she gets along with.

Eyore (the Big E)--the heritage bred Cornish--is sitting out this round. He is very young. He crowed for the first time last week, and is very proud of himself.

I am shooting for hatching at least 30, I'd love to hatch 60 this spring. Then I'm going down to three trios for winter.

 

[Omniskies]

Sounds great. We'll have to get together sometime. Even if you don't have anything ready by Sedalia it may be fun to make a day trip out of it. I think I'll definitely be showing in the waterfowl bit of the show and may have some rabbits up there. If not I'm bound to buy a few things I can't live without.

My Cornish Rocks are finally laying eggs crossed with my Orpington rooster. I finally managed to get a couple Silver Laced Wyandotte roosters today. Once I get enough Orpington cross eggs I'll be putting the Wyandotte roosters in the mix.

I'm definitely looking forward to having a pair or trio of standard Cornish. They'll just be fun to have around.

 

[estpr13]

Well my Del roo X Cornish hens meaties are comming up on 12 weeks and are disappointingly small even tho they get all you can eat. Perhaps it is because I don't let them out because of the weather and hawks.

The roos look somewhat like Dels and the hens look like dirty pigeons. Some of the roos are starting to fill out but are still small. I hope they will go into a growing spurt, cause right now they are eating a lot.

Ryu, When is the meet in Cape Girardeau? I went to college there. Didn't know they had a show. Grew up in Poplar Bluff.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
That's too bad, I hoped you'd get better results. All the folks that have said they tried it, said that it works better to use a standard Cornish roo over other breed hens. Something odd about chicken genetics, it doesn't work equally well both directions.

 

[estpr13]

Quote:
I agree about the genetics. Someone posted that your chicks get the most genes from the hen which is one reason you can line breed without too much of a problem. I don't know.

Raising meat birds in the winter doesn't make sense because you cannot tractor them very well if at all. With this ice storm I've had to keep them in and the poop is starting to smell. I'm going to have to be more aggrressive about treating that problem. They have gone through 15 pounds of feed in about 2 days now; so hopefully they are starting a growth spurt.

I'll get and post some pics later this week. I'll weigh and harvest one next week. About week 13.

 

[te dave]

have a lot of messages concerning cross breeding broilers with a standard breed roo, especially standard cornish. i was wondering however, in the case of the freedom rangers/red bro broilers, i know they are hybrids, what if you cross them against each other. like i said earlier, i know they are hybrids and you really won't know what you are getting, but if you choose stock for certain traits, ie:growth rate and weight at a certain date, and continue this for several generations, could'nt you possibly produce home bred, hatched, and raised broilers? has anyone tried this? am i over simplifying genetics? i did scratch the surface of the subject in college many years ago, and remember if you kept sellecting for certain traits, that eventually you would develop a pattern. isn't this the way all breeds were started anyway? i'm just tired of ordering chicks every time i want broilers and standard breeds just grow too slow and consume too much feed for the return. i really don't like the cornish rock
crosses sold at every hatchery, and am thinking
about ordering some from j.m.hatchery this spring, but would like to hold back a few for breeding purposes. any comments would be helpful.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Those are simple genetics. A cross between two meat birds will give you more meatbirds. The breeding of the red broilers is not as complex as the cornish x so yes it can be done overtime.

Cornish get too big too quick to be bred, the freedom rangers are the halfway point between the cornish x and the dual purpose.

I would select the fastest growing male to the fastest growing female. Try to breed different lines of the freedom rangers together to produce hybrid vigor.

It's a long shot but like you said this is how breeds were formed in the first place.... one person like yourself decided to just experiment and finaly it just clicked.

Good luck.

 

[Ryu]

My Standard Cornish develop veeeerrrry slowly. The young hens don't come into lay until 9-10-11 months old. My young rooster is just crowing and he's 7-8 months old? They do seem to just get bigger and bigger as they get older though.

I think you're right, you've got to get the right genetic on the hybrid cross to get the meat on fast.

I am going to try a Cornish x Barred Rock to get some Barred Cornish ( I saw a pic on Feathersite and they were adorable), and cross with Sussex to get some Standard Spangled. I can let you guys know how that goes. I'm not necessarily breeding for the table, but I'm sure there will be a few that don't make the cull.

 

[Ryu]

I this is the website for Cape Girardeau:

http://www.crohio.com/hc/

It is not solid that we are going, but it looks interesting.

The first eggs are going in the incubator Valentine's day.