Homegrown Cornish crosses

[Fordfunnyfarm]

I’m looking for someone with more experience creating there own Cornish crosses. I am starting a small chicken business and wanting to cut my chick cost down as well as make a super flavorful chicken. I have order purebred dark cornish, bresse whites, and white plymouth rocks. I’m wondering everyone experience on crossing these and slaughter timelines compared to big company Cornish cross.

 

[Molpet]

I kept a CX hen and bred her to a random mix roo. 3rd generation Cockerels dress out at 16 weeks 5 to 7 lbs

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I also kept a CornishX hen to introduce some desired genetics into my mutts I'm working on. Half her offspring (she also has the lightest color egg of my birds, another desired trait) are notably larger than the average in my flock, the other half are not. Selective culling is the current name of the game.

[and for reference, my live weights are in the 5.5# - 6.0# range at 16 weeks, meaning I dress out between 2.9 and 3.3# birds] Molpet is generations ahead of me in efforts to improve their flock.

 

[RiverOtter]

I understand that they are a specific mix of breeds. I am Trying to give buyers a reason to buy meat from me and not the market because even in my Cornish crosses are expensive to buy process so I figured having my own parents stock where I can sell hatching eggs from would be a good alternative

Diet is the reason people will buy meat from you and not from the store. Giving the birds a different diet than they get in Tyson's growhouses changes the flavor of the meat.

And no, CX are not expensive to buy. They are the cheapest of chicks to buy because of - as has been mentioned - economy of scale. If you do the math (and you absolutely SHOULD do the math!!!) you will spend far, FAR more than $2 per chick on buying, then raising, the parent birds (and don't underestimate just how much the big breeds eat) and incubating the chicks. Amortize the cost of the incubator and don't forget the electricity to run it. I have a nice incubator that I paid $130 for = 65 $2 chicks to pay for that, and another 20 for the electricity to hatch all 85 chicks.
So, add up; cost to buy parent birds
+cost of raising parent birds, including losses. Include their coop and pen.
+cost of incubator
+cost of eggs (you could sell or eat those eggs instead of hatching them, and that $$ needs to be accounted for)
+ cost of electric to run the incubator
Then, take the number you get (and it will be over a thousand at the very least) and divide it by 2 to get the number of chicks you'd have to sell to break even. Why 2? Because I can buy CX chicks for $2 including shipping all day long.

The math doesn't work. To make the math work, you need to scale up to where you are raising thousands of birds, buying feed direct from growers in bulk, and basically getting bulk discounts on everything, AND a stipend from the government (or at least a hefty tax break).

 

[U_Stormcrow]

CornishX are a terminal cross, produced from four lines of grandparent stock. For that reason, breeding one's own CornishX and "small" flock/farm/business are mutually exclusive terms - nor can you compete on a cost basis, as the commercial hatcheries pump those birds out in massive quantity, enjoying economies of scale we will never touch.

I'd recommend, if you want to compete in the meat chicken space, that you try and compete on some other basis than the supermarket bird of choice - even if you could maintain the needed grandparent and parent flocks, you aren't going to be able to move the cost needle much unless you scale WAY up.

 

[Molpet]

I understand that they are a specific mix of breeds. I am Trying to give buyers a reason to buy meat from me and not the market because even in my Cornish crosses are expensive to buy process so I figured having my own parents stock where I can sell hatching eggs from would be a good alternative

Nothing is cheaper than CX. You have to feed the parents all winter and they usually don't lay then when over a year old. I do have a few that lay all winter.
My white CX mixes tend to die starting 18 months to 3rys. They are the meatiest and most lay 3 eggs a week. I also have barred that aren't bad for either. Black is the 3rd color they are good layers but not as much meat.
Colors are from br, bjg. Hens under CX mix roo.
Last year I used a dark Cornish over the CX mix hens. Weights are about the same.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I understand that they are a specific mix of breeds

They are not a specific mix of breeds. They started with certain breeds to get a start on body shape and conformation, the right feather color, the right skin color, and other features. But that was just the start of a selective breeding process to develop them into what they are today. The research wasn't just genetics either, a lot was in how to manage and care for them. There are serious management issues in keeping them alive long enough to breed. If you are going with the Cornish X, you will be much better off buying the chicks as opposed to trying to breed them.

Several people on here have experience trying to incorporate Cornish X or Ranger types into a breeding program. It's not easy but they will offer you advice and suggestions.

If you want to make a business of it you need to find your own niche so you can charge more. Raising Cornish X to sell hatching eggs isn't likely to work in any short time frame. Trying to breed them to hatch eggs yourself and sell the chicks or meat isn't very hopeful. You need to be a little more creative to find your niche.

 

[Torinik]

I have a meat bird, which I'm assuming was a CX, and brown laying hybrid cross. I'm on F3 this season and have to say I'm astounded at the results.
All chicks in all 3 batches were well over 1.2 kg (about 3 pound) at 8 weeks. The second batch did particularly well since I kept feeding them ad libitum for longer. They did very obviously exhibit that typical CX behavior, always hungry, laying on their bellies with head in the feeder and turning into balloons on feet. I ended up turning their feed down also.

The surplus got butchered at 12 weeks. By then they had to run with the rest and they got what I consider a normal day ration. Nonetheless, they seem to be having a growth-spurt up until 8 to 9 weeks and then it slows down. I don't know as to how far this is genetics and how much of it is related to food and running around. But if they drop death from being overweight it won't tell me much either.

I did, however, have a lot more serious leg problems with F3. This time I had day old chicks with a limp that developed in chicks that couldn't walk anymore by week 8, so more typical CX problems I'm guessing. All those have been culled when they started suffering from their leg condition, i.e. when they couldn't walk anymore and just sat around on the little roost they have.

The last batch was fed the least and they are doing really well. Much smaller than the first two batches but much more active and a lot more healthy looking with shiny feathers.

Every generation seems to be bigger and grow faster than the previous, so far, which I obviously select for as long as they're also healthy. The F3 rooster and hen I kept from the first batch are already as big, if not bigger, as the F1 hens still running around.

I'm looking forward to F4 next year, but you never know what you will get. It might turn out as astounding as this year, or leg problems or something else might put an end to this experiment. As long as it's a pass time, as it is for me, I don't see much wrong with either scenario even though I would much prefer the first. Just saying, I wouldn't want my livelihood depending on it, or invest a lot of money in it that could be spend better.

Good luck, whichever way you decide to go.

 

[CNJ]

This article gave me some ideas for hybrid vigor....
https://fareasternagriculture.com/live-stock/poultry/broiler-breeders-and-their-management
"Compromise is achieved by cross breeding. Simple programmes will typically use a ‘table quality’ strain as the male line (e.g. Cornish) and an egg producing strain (e.g. New Hampshire) for the female line. More complicated schemes yielding a better result would be ‘Cornish’ males and ‘New Hampshire’ females, crossed with the ‘White Plymouth Rock’ strain. Crossbred males and crossbred females from these respective crosses are then used as broiler parent stock to breed the broiler chicks."

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I didn't harvest any of the 1/2 CX until they were years old, so I'm not sure what they would have weighed at 16wks. The next generation dressed out that big.. the bjg cross had taller longer bones.. the br were compact like a CX.

Some hatchings of my unknown Roo over my CX hen are listed in my project thread, with weights. Short answer is that about half the offspring got the "size gene" and were markedly larger than their siblings, and about half did not. NONE approached the size of a true CX (and honestly, mother hen while huge didn't bulk up as quickly as others have reported for the breed). Some of that is due to free ranging and not offering a free feed diet, but I doubt is all of the explanation. The female offspring who got "the size" bulked up like their non-Cornish background male siblings, which isn't a bad thing.

ALL got the dominant white with color leakage genetics, which I didn't want and have been culling out.