Good luck finding the 2 parent crosses... supposed to be a trade secret, but has been said involves a 2 or 4 way cross with white plymouth rock and white cornish(hard to find)I'm only on my second round of CX but did a ton of reading before venturing into it. most alternatives I've seen seem to take a long time to grow out and cost quite a bit more per pound to produce. I've found a strain (cobb 500 CX) and a regimen for feeding that seems to be working very well with few physical issues, if any. I put the food and the water up so they have to stand to eat and drink and I leave them far apart to make them walk and I reduce the protein count occasionally if I see lots of loose stools. these birds are plucky, run around, stay active, dig holes in the substrate looking for food bits overnight. in keeping them to breeding age, is the hope to find a way to produce the chicks yourself? I can definitely see an advantage in that I can not find a way to purchase the eggs anywhere. how hard would it be to keep the two parent crosses and breed the cobb 500 myself? seems like exercise/free ranging if possible and lower protein would do the trick with the COBB 500 to get them to breeding age ... has anyone bread them out? my focus, being in a suburban environment has been to produce a freezer full of meat in as short a period of time as is humane (by my standards) allowing for my operation to not overwhelm the neighbors I share fence with (5 of them). I absolutely can not free range them, my neighbors would call the city in a second if they knew how many chickens I had in my coop and I'm sure the city would find something, even though I'm within the 6 adult bird limit.