First Run of Cornish Cross Meat Birds and Super Excited!

[Dave C]

Some of My Buff Plymouth Rocks, they are 6 weeks now
They have a decent shape but not much weight to them, now at 430g.




They are not in my project plans for next year but possibly later depending how things shape up.

 

[JRNash]

Good looking birds Dave. I don't think you will be disappointed if you add them to your experiments. I know i haven't been. The rocks have gave me the best consistent crosses to date.No matter what other breed I use in the cross,the barred rocks come out on top

 

[JRNash]

It's too the point that when I retire my slow crosses from laying they will probably be replaced with barred rocks.

 

[JRNash]

Or if I can find them Malines.

 

[JRNash]

Everyone misses the point. It IS a maran x slow broiler cross. These types of results will pop up from time to time.
Its guaranteed by the way genetics work. The slow broiler and the maran BOTH have oriental game.in their foundation stock. It's the myriad random combinations that guarantees at some point one of us will hit on a winning combination. Part of what I'm doing is blind luck. I have tried to stack the odds in my favor by using the historical foundation stocks of different breeds. By researching the foundation stock it allows you to build a loose template of what you may be able to achieve. If the people that have went before us in this endeavor had kept more detailed records things would be alot easier. Every new breed had a start. Someone was attempting to bring out or enforce specific characteristics. And I assure you that everyone of them came across something that made them scratch their head and say, what the heck?!!?? It's a numbers game. If you hatch enough,sooner or later something will pop out tha doesn't fit the mold.With the way I keep shuffling the male breeds in and out of my flock,genetic diversity should be off the charts

 

[JRNash]

If it was as simple as 1 + 1 = 2 Then you should be able to reproduce any breed by following in the footsteps of who ever developed the breed.
Good luck with that though!! Gentic diversity,Genetic drift and environmental pressures.will all play a role in which genes will be expressed.

 

[duluthralphie]

JR is correct throw back happen when you are playing with genetics and sometimes when you don't.


I have a CLB rooster that showed up with a kind of Pea comb, (backwards looking but a pea comb, it almost looks like a rose comb) I had to talk to a guy that really knows chicken genetics to figure out what happened. He said, it was a throw back gene that has hung on since the CLB were developed and just popped up.

When you are combining genes and traits looking for one or two things like we do, size or growth rate, you never know what will be removed and what recessive genes you might bring out. I would not expect JR to be able to make another bird like this, but it could happen. That bird has so many recessive genes at work it might be closer to a T-rex than a chicken.




Nothing to do with the thread, but here is the pea comb..








You can see a pretty typical CLB except the comb.

 

[JRNash]

Thank you Doc.

 

[JRNash]

Another thing to keep in mind.
When things like this happen
the opportunity to increase hybrid vigor goes up exponentially.

 

[JRNash]

hybrid vigor will only express when their is high genetic diversity. In time,with a closed flock even if it's a mixed flock, the effects of hybrid vigor will cease to exist