- Mar 6, 2016
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I read an article about using A/B to C/D heritage birds to create a fast growing meat bird. I tried this and it did not work. I concluded that the fast growing Cornish Cross is breed specific, so I recently bred a Breese Rooster/Cornish X hen for A/B and a Dark Cornish Rooster/Cornish X hen for C/D. The next step is to breed the A/B line to the C/D line to see what happens. The A/B line is going on 3 months on 2/08/22 and the C/D line is a about month behind. The body shape of the A/B line is round and low to the ground like the Cornish X, but they did not grow as fast. I will weigh them on 2/08/22. They should dress around 4 to 5 lbs in 3 month since they got that look. Its interesting to note that some of the A/B birds have blue legs.
I also have another experiment going on with a Standard Dark Cornish rooster/White Plymouth Rock hen for A/B and a Standard Dark Cornish rooster/White Breese hen for B/C. However, the Standard Dark Cornish rooster/White Plymouth Rock hen line is 3 months ahead of the Standard Dark Cornish/White Breese hen line, so its going to be a while.
I am also working on turning my Standard Dark Cornish line white. I got some white looking chicks with pea comb in a recent hatch. I'll be pairing them with my Standard A/B cross, my two roosters from that hatch are mostly white with scattered red feathers and they both have pea comb. I could line breed the white ones, but I don't like the idea of pairing brother and sister together.
Im also crossing American Bresse to CX soon. I talked about using 4 truebreeding lines to create an F2 or 4 way polyhybrid.
I think i saw you responding to one of my posts on this topic. Maybe we could trade or work together on this idea.