European Fibro Meat Bird Project

[Skyeknight]

This is a side project I have been wanting to do for a few months. I got an Ayam Cemani rooster back in October from friends, because he was aggressive. This rooster kinda kicked off the whole rabbit hole of chicken genetics for me. Since I am going to breed chickens anyways I might as well breed some from meat. Then I won't have to buy from the store either. For this reason I got 2 Hubbard JA757 pullets and plan to get some Ross 308 pullets too. To add more of an exotic look I would like the meat to be fibro, besides the cross of dominant white feathers with fibromelanistic skin(AKA zombies) looks really cool! Since the colour of the meat is basically impossible to tell without processing the bird I will be outbreeding fibro first and kinda see after how many generations it needs to be bred into my line of meat birds again. I will be outbreeding both the Ayam Cemani as well as the Cornish Rocks with Brahma and Malay. I mainly want to keep the size of the birds up while inheriting the meat gain to a degree of the Cornish Rocks. This projects is mostly to try out fun genetic stuff.

Picture 1: This is the Ayam Cemani rooster I have. He is one year old.

Picture 2: These are the 2 Hubbard JA757 pullets I got. They are around 2 months old so it will be a while before they start laying. I am limiting the feed they get so they don't get too big. The Hubbard JA757 is a slower growing broiler breed.

Picture 3: This picture shows all the important information like which strains are the parents and the expected weight per week of this strain of broiler. I am very interested in how their offspring will compare with the Hubbard JA757 and differ from each other because of the different inherited genetics.

Picture 4: I thing I found interesting is that the one that has buff leakage is also barred. So I will assume that M77 males are all barred as well. Guess my F1's will tell.

I would love to hear if others (within the EU) are interested in fibro meat birds and just general thoughts about this project.

 

[Skyeknight]

One thing I am wondering is how well Cornish Rocks free range close to water sources like rivers or ponds. I know their survival instincts are very questionable. In the Netherlands where I live a lot of the pastures/grasslands have a "sloot" as barrier. Google translates it to ditch but that doesn't sound right. They are like very small canals ranging from widths of 1m to 20m. The 1m ones are often pretty steep, while from a few meters width onwards on they generally are not.

This is an extreme example that shows a lot of the different widths. The "canals" near me are 4m wide max.

Anyways I was wondering how well either Cornish rocks or their offspring do with big water sources like this. So if anyone has any experience with keeping them near lakes, ponds or rivers then I would love to hear it!

 

[Molpet]

I have a creek that is about 600 ft from where I had a broody raising a few CX. They didn't get more than a 100ft from the coop. I kept one pullet in 2016. Most of my flock are out of her sons. They go along the edge and as far as I know they haven't had any problems. But it does widen and has an area with a gentle slope. They don't cross it.

 

[Skyeknight]

So I managed to get the Ross 308 pullets. Unlike the in Europe used Hubbards these are the Cornish Cross Americans are familiar with.

Picture 1: The Ross pullets. One normal dominant white and the other has partial barred leakage. Unlike with the Hubbards I didn't know this type of leakage even existed!

Picture 2: The Hubbards and Ross together. When seeing them side by side the difference supprised me. The Ross pullets are 3 weeks younger and have a smaller but broader build than the Hubbards. They are were also slightly heavier at arrival, being around 2.5 KG. They kinda make the Hubbards look like "normal" chickens.

Over the last week I have noticed a big difference in behaviour. The Ross pullets tend to lay around a lot and occasionaly preen their feathers. Meanwhile the Hubbards play with each other, run around, scratch, "dust" bathe and explore.

The Hubbards are also more dominant and peck the combs of the Ross occasionaly, which has for the barred Ross caused a few scabs. I had assumed the lazy stereotype of Cornish Cross and thought given the amount of space they would do alright together. It wasn't severe enough to warrant separation, so I haven't and instead opted to make the coop darker instead. This seems to have resolved the issue almost entirely.

It is incredibly interesting to learn and truly understand what is being sold in the supermarkets and why in the Netherlands we changed from eating Ross 308 to Hubbard JA757.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be good weather so that will probably be their first day outside.