Heritage breed Cornish Chickens: why are they ignored and not widely bred

[NewJourney]

The pea comb gene is represented by P/P in its homozygous form. It is often considered dominant, however, with a trained eye you can tell when it is heterozygous for single comb (P/p+), so it's more correct to consider it incompletely dominant. Therefore I propose the intermediate should be called the "pingle comb." It's less obvious in hens (other than being taller than a pea) but in roosters it is quite obvious and often the center row of peas is much higher than the others
Homozygous pea combsView attachment 3993779View attachment 3993781View attachment 3993782
HeterozygousView attachment 3993784View attachment 3993780
It can sometimes escape detection in females but I noticed your hen's comb is taller than usual.
It's common for Easter Eggers to only be heterozygous for pea comb.

That's really neat! I love seeing so many people with so many varied interests and deep rooted bits of knowledge online. This is very interesting to me. Thank you for sharing!

 

[NatJ]

It appears this "white laced" variety is also called Jubilee. In my search for Jubilee Cornish I am finding a lot more information about this breed and color variety! I am now very interested in learning more - since there is actually information available online for these birds.

I think the White Laced Red are supposed to be single laced (white line around the edge of the red feather) but Jubilee are supposed to be double laced (two white lines around the edge of the red feather.)

So not quite the same, just close.
Dark Cornish are also double laced (like Jubilee, but with black lacing.)
Blue Laced Red Cornish have single lacing (like White Laced Red, but with blue lacing instead of the white.)

 

[NewJourney]

I think the White Laced Red are supposed to be single laced (white line around the edge of the red feather) but Jubilee are supposed to be double laced (two white lines around the edge of the red feather.)

So not quite the same, just close.
Dark Cornish are also double laced (like Jubilee, but with black lacing.)
Blue Laced Red Cornish have single lacing (like White Laced Red, but with blue lacing instead of the white.)

Ah, well, I'm still glad I finally found a way to search for more information about this breed. It was the only way I could find discussions about it, and old (but still very relevant) info. Either way, many of those Jubilee birds look, to my untrained eye, the same as my birds, just generally much more mature.

I have noticed that no matter which search engine I use to try to find info (no matter the search) it's generally quite difficult to find what I'm looking for these days. The advertisers seem to be directing our searches to more generic search terms that we can't change, and are unaware of. Not to get conspiracy theory-ish, but the "dead internet" theory sure seems to have some validity.

 

[saysfaa]

...

Why?

...

They were my first choice for a few decades before I could have chickens while I planned farms. Then, when I could have chickens, I had a coop/run in a backyard rather than a farm and I thought they were not a good fit because the descriptions indicated they didn't tolerate confinement very well.

...
I have noticed that no matter which search engine I use to try to find info (no matter the search) it's generally quite difficult to find what I'm looking for these days. ..

I noticed that too. For a long time, it could be somewhat worked around by scrolling through many pages. All at once, literally overnight, the several search engines I used all stopped giving different results on later pages. They just repeat one or two pages endlessly.

 

[NewJourney]

Update on possible sexing of my birds... As I was coming out of the back door of the house I saw one of my Bresse cockerels attempting to mate with one of my Cornish. They are the lowest in pecking order in my flock as of right now, so I highly doubt there was a pecking order issue. I'm 100% sure he was trying to mount for mating. She got away. And I cannot yet tell them apart except for the darkest, most solid-color one.

I have a bunch of photos I took today. There are four birds out eating with most of the other birds, and ONE that chooses to stay back in the chicken run. I free-range my birds in my back yard daily, so I keep the chicken coop and yard gates locked in the open position.

I managed to only get a couple of photos with all four (ignoring the one in the coop/run) together:

The darkest/most solid-color bird is the smallest, and has a comb that is the most developed.

This is one of the clearest/most in-focus photos I've taken of these to-date. I LOVE this photo. I am seeing some reddening of the facial skin in at least three of these five Cornish. One of them is below.

It's at this point in all the photos I took that I cannot keep track of which bird is which (other than the one that has very solid coloring).

Random up-close photo of the one with the "solid" coloration:

The one in the chicken run that is the most nervous/nerotic:

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Update on possible sexing of my birds... As I was coming out of the back door of the house I saw one of my Bresse cockerels attempting to mate with one of my Cornish. They are the lowest in pecking order in my flock as of right now, so I highly doubt there was a pecking order issue. I'm 100% sure he was trying to mount for mating. She got away. And I cannot yet tell them apart except for the darkest, most solid-color one.

I have a bunch of photos I took today. There are four birds out eating with most of the other birds, and ONE that chooses to stay back in the chicken run. I free-range my birds in my back yard daily, so I keep the chicken coop and yard gates locked in the open position.

I managed to only get a couple of photos with all four (ignoring the one in the coop/run) together:
View attachment 3995285View attachment 3995286View attachment 3995287
The darkest/most solid-color bird is the smallest, and has a comb that is the most developed.

This is one of the clearest/most in-focus photos I've taken of these to-date. I LOVE this photo. I am seeing some reddening of the facial skin in at least three of these five Cornish. One of them is below.
View attachment 3995294
It's at this point in all the photos I took that I cannot keep track of which bird is which (other than the one that has very solid coloring).

View attachment 3995295

Random up-close photo of the one with the "solid" coloration:
View attachment 3995296
View attachment 3995297
View attachment 3995298
View attachment 3995299

The one in the chicken run that is the most nervous/nerotic:
View attachment 3995300
View attachment 3995301

Honestly all of them look like my females. The darkest is the only one I'd still watch, but even that one is probably just a badly marked female

 

[Amer]

Yeah to be honest they all look female to me. Did you order all pullets by mistake?
Or it's luck. All a possibility.

 

[NewJourney]

Honestly all of them look like my females. The darkest is the only one I'd still watch, but even that one is probably just a badly marked female

Unfortunately, that was my gut feeling, too. One of them has slightly curvier saddle feathers, and it is the darker one.

I sure hope I have a male, and I hope he's fertile. Now that I've spent a lot more time trying to learn more about this breed, I am more interested in them and want to keep them in my flock at least through next year. I know there hatchery quality, but perhaps it'll be a springboard for a longer term project I will enjoy. I really wanted Dark Cornish but settled for these. Maybe I'll add some Dark Cornish next year after we re-home some of our current flock to a friend.

Thank you for your insight into my youngins.

 

[NatJ]

Unfortunately, that was my gut feeling, too.

That's what I keep thinking too: I don't see any that look like males. So if any are males, they are being very sneaky about it.

The hardest chickens to sex are the ones that are just females or just males, because you can drive yourself crazy looking for sex-specific differences that actually don't exist!

 

[NewJourney]

Yeah to be honest they all look female to me. Did you order all pullets by mistake?
Or it's luck. All a possibility.

That's what I keep thinking too: I don't see any that look like males. So if any are males, they are being very sneaky about it.

It's "luck". I ordered straight run on these. In the order I had bought other breeds, each with females only, so maybe they accidentally grabbed all females in WLRC, too. I won't necessarily be upset that I got all females. I am planning to create mixed breed birds to see how they grow to possibly hatch my own quicker growing meat birds that are NOT the traditional Cornish Cross. I can't stand that they grow ridiculously huge and don't have the energy or ability to walk around their final days.

I can't bring myself to raise any of the commercially hatched CC for meat. Their health problems and how dirty they so easily get turn my stomach. I do eat store-bought chicken meat which is likely to be from CC. I just can't personally raise them. I hear that first generation CC are NOT the same and do not grow nearly as fast or as big as the CC bred commercially. I'm happy about that. I'd actually like to raise Big Red Broilers (the name that McMurray Hatchery uses for the newer version of the Red Ranger (I think). They are supposedly reproducible by raising some of those birds up to maturity and hatching out their eggs. But I'd like a home-grown fallback, too.

I will likely get a small batch of the BRB chicks to see how they turn out. Maybe I'll try mixing the BRB with the Cornish LOL!