Crossing your own meat breed

[kfacres]

I have to agree that the Cornish are slow growing but my brahmas did fine on their growth rate.

Yes all my stock are from hatchery birds. I was planning to cross the cornish/brahma crosses back with the cornish rooster.

Have you seen any of the pics of the birds I've been making? My white Cornish are about 7/8 good Show Quality White Cornish, and about 1/8 good Show Quality Brahma project

 

[R2elk]

Have you seen any of the pics of the birds I've been making? My white Cornish are about 7/8 good Show Quality White Cornish, and about 1/8 good Show Quality Brahma project

Not really, apparently my search skills aren't quite good enough. You do have a nice write up on your "ideal" meat bird project.

 

[kfacres]

Not really, apparently my search skills aren't quite good enough. You do have a nice write up on your "ideal" meat bird project.

here is a few pics of the whites, a WLR, and a black laced red. https://www.backyardchickens.com/g/...you-are-trying-to-make-it-or-want-to-find-it/

In the other album is some old pics.

If you want to see pics of this year's breeder birds- send me an email direct. [email protected]

 

[kfacres]

Some of the young birds.

gooly dang, i thought those birds looked familiar in the pictures... until I did some research-- and then found out why...

 

[kizanne]

What DP bird are the colored boilers crossed to? I was thinking of trying to get a meatier egg layer. I free range so feed cnversion to eggs is not as crittical if I was keeping them confined. 3-4 eggs a week per hen is fine with me if I can also get a semi fast growing broiler. I am going to have to get a few of these this spring to experiment with. The best thing with Chicken experiments that they all taste like Chicken....

Don't know if that question was for me....

I crossed my red broiler hens, black broiler hen and an australorpe to a black broiler. So red broiler to black though I have one black hen too. I have 4 hens and 1 roo. The roo is a black broiler.

 

[Triple Willow]

Hi everybody. I am new around here and rusty on chicken keeping but I have wheels turning in my mind. I don't have experience in breeding meat birds but I do have experience in beef cattle. We had cows that were purebred Black Angus (cow) by purebred Brahma (bull) F1 crosses. Both of those are excellent mothers and excellent at meat production. By crossing those two you get the best of both breeds - "hybrid vigor." We bred the resulting Black Angus/Brahma F1 cows to a large framed bull such as a Semintal or Chianina. The resulting beef calves were great!

I am thinking that breeding meat chickens will be very similar. I have read up on different breeds and have come to the conclusion that the breeds I want to try are Australorp, White Wyandotte and Dark Cornish. Since the Australorp and White Wyandotte are said to be meaty, quick maturing, and good layers I believe I want to cross them as the F1 mothers - White Wyandotte roos over Australorp hens (like the Black Angus/Brahma F1 moms). Then I would take the Australorp/White Wyandotte F1 hens and breed them to the best Dark Cornish rooster I can find. The meaty, quick maturing qualities of the hens combined with the meaty Dark Cornish roo should make for some great and very hardy meat birds.

I'll also add that I want to have Australorp hens as the foundation hens because even when not just producing meat babies, they will be great egg layers. Has anybody tried using these breeds in this way? I hope to try it one day. I bet there would be a market for the meat chicks, who knows.

 

[ocap]

Here is what I am trying to do.

I want to keep a flock of two or three different breeds to free range around my land and supply us with eggs and meat. I am looking for a breed of hen that lays a fair amount of eggs and when crossed with a (insert breed here) rooster makes a good meat bird. I am going to keep some broody hens for surrogates to raise them. Any thoughts??

Here are the breeds that I have ordered and will do something similar to what RBOutdoors is asking about:
White Jersey Giant
Buckeye
Australorp
Silver Penciled Wyandotte
Buff Orpington
Buff Brahma
and Silkie bantam for my broody hens although three of the breeds above are good brooders

Which Rooster breed should I use? (Most if not all of the wyandotte hens will be separated)

 

[kfacres]

Hi everybody. I am new around here and rusty on chicken keeping but I have wheels turning in my mind. I don't have experience in breeding meat birds but I do have experience in beef cattle. We had cows that were purebred Black Angus (cow) by purebred Brahma (bull) F1 crosses. Both of those are excellent mothers and excellent at meat production. By crossing those two you get the best of both breeds - "hybrid vigor." We bred the resulting Black Angus/Brahma F1 cows to a large framed bull such as a Semintal or Chianina. The resulting beef calves were great!

I am thinking that breeding meat chickens will be very similar. I have read up on different breeds and have come to the conclusion that the breeds I want to try are Australorp, White Wyandotte and Dark Cornish. Since the Australorp and White Wyandotte are said to be meaty, quick maturing, and good layers I believe I want to cross them as the F1 mothers - White Wyandotte roos over Australorp hens (like the Black Angus/Brahma F1 moms). Then I would take the Australorp/White Wyandotte F1 hens and breed them to the best Dark Cornish rooster I can find. The meaty, quick maturing qualities of the hens combined with the meaty Dark Cornish roo should make for some great and very hardy meat birds.

I'll also add that I want to have Australorp hens as the foundation hens because even when not just producing meat babies, they will be great egg layers. Has anybody tried using these breeds in this way? I hope to try it one day. I bet there would be a market for the meat chicks, who knows.

You are close--- but to me the ideal three way cross is Herf cows, under Angus bulls-- and those baldy's under Char bulls..

I struggle to believe you found a high percentage Chi anywhere-- guessing it was just a generic Angus...

In the poultry world- two breed crosses tend to work better than three's. The consistancy factor is lacking usually with three-- same as cattle.

I'm guessing you live in a hot climate- if you were using eared cattle- be careful using super fluffy chickens-- they might not excel down there.

It's going to take you something that lays in 6 weeks- to counterbalance the slow maturity of the cornish-- well, atleast my birds and all other's that I know about are so slow growing, it's not funny.

Read my BYC page, it outlies something that will intreque you.

 

[City Chicken]

I have a pure strain of Chantecler. I am slowly breeding and culling to improve them for size and breed type. I find the main thing that needs doing is to feed them properly using high protein from day 1 including animal protein for the breeders.

I obtained 25 buckeyes but they too were inferior and not fertile between the males and females so I assumed too much inbreeding for what was available to me. Solution: forget keeping a pure strain of buckeyes and let them breed to the chanteclers. Only 5 buckeye hens and 1 rooster survived the coyote. Got 2 keeper pullets from that cross.

I had 25 Cx which I didn't have time to butcher and 2 hens survived over the winter and mated with a buckeye rooster and a chantecler rooster. Result was 2 really big amazing roosters and 6 good sized hens (one grey the others white with a black feather or two). They are aggressive free rangers and very healthy.  The 2 Cx hens are 2 years old and still going strong. 

I raised another 20 Cx over this winter and ended up with 9 pullets that look like they are going to do well and survive like the original two. I will divide them between a chantecler, a buckeye, and the best hybrid rooster from last years Cx cross when they start laying. Cx tend to lay an egg a day when they start and because they lay large eggs, I take a chance on hatching them out sooner then ideal. The other Cx/chantecler rooster will be mated back to chanteclers.

My plan is to then take all of the results from the above matings and divide them up into 2 separate lines next year and keep hatching and culling until the offspring become consistant to size and egg laying. I really don't care about colouring although it looks like they have the potential to be sex-linked which is nice. ( a rust feather in the rooster and a black feather in the hen)

The Cx/buckeye rooster from last year will be my gold standard and all of the hens were just plain good. Just waiting to see how they do for egg laying. I may have to tweak that later.

I will post some pictures if I ever find my camera which is packed away in a box somewhere so no promises for pictures anytime soon as I don't have time for an involved search. Will do what I can, because that rooster is worth taking a picture of.

I am really excited to hear you are doing this. I kept a cx hen and she is probably nearing 20 weeks. When should I expect her to start laying? The rooster is beginning to dance around her, so I should assume its soon! When she does... I hope he will have success with her... She is a fatty. My roo is light Sussex and I'm excited to work on this cross.
I'd love any more info you have on how you bred your cx hen, egg laying habits, how long into her laying you began to incubate etc...

 

[ocap]

I have decided to only do this to the F1 cross, I will keep chicken tractors for the pure replacements and process all the F1 produced at 20 weeks or sooner.
this way I can have multiple rooster breeds free range with my hens