How to sex a Cornish cross

[dirtbagchickens]

I'd like to keep one or two broilers from this batch with a rooster and try to incubate some. Are do they start laying about the the same age?
Any good threads on that or tips in how they are different to keep vs eggers?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

They have to be managed very different than layers and it's really not best to keep them past butcher point, let alone in a layer flock.

They cannot have food avaliable all day, because they'll eat themselves to death (Layers do best when allowed to eat throughout the day)
They lay very few eggs if they survive up to laying age which seems to be about a year (layers usually start before six or seven months and lay far more consistently)
They aren't heat tolerant because of the amount of heft they Carry around
They're liable to just go down out of the blue due to leg or heart problems

 

[dirtbagchickens]

Yeah I have the CXs in there own adjacent pen area, so I can feed and mgnt accordingly.

So how does one breed broilers or CXs.?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Yeah I have the CXs in there own adjacent pen area, so I can feed and mgnt accordingly.

So how does one breed broilers or CXs.?

You don't.

Parent lines are a guarded secret in hatcheries. They're not going to just tell people what makes their best sellers

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah I have the CXs in there own adjacent pen area, so I can feed and mgnt accordingly.

So how does one breed broilers or CXs.?

The CX took over the chicken meat industry in the middle of the 1900's so they are not exactly new. They developed four different breeding lines. Each of those lines produce a specific grandparent of the CX broiler. One line produces the father of the hen that lays the egg that hatches into a broiler, for example. What this means is that the CX are hybrids that don't breed true. If you breed CX to CX some offspring are going to be better at meat production than others. In general they will be much better than anything else you can breed but they will be uneven and it is possible you might get some you don't like. A few might be up to CX standards but certainly not all.

The commercial companies spend a lot of money on research. Not all of that is on genetics. A lot is on how to feed and manage them to keep them alive. Some of that spending in on keeping them alive until butcher age and how to maximize profits. A fair amount of that spending is on how to keep the breeding flocks alive and healthy so they can produce the eggs that hatch into broilers. This is where a lot of us run into problems, keeping them alive and healthy enough to breed and produce eggs.

Several people on the forum have tried using CX in their breeding programs with varying degrees of success. The more successful seem to use a Dual Purpose rooster over a CX hen to produce chicks that are not up to CX standards but better than Dual Purpose. I have not tried that myself. Hopefully some of those will comment.

 

[Kiraeh]

I kept three hens last year, all laid a few eggs in the fall but I didn't try to hatch any then. Two died over winter, the one that lived is still around and doing extremely well, had no trouble all summer with the heat(I have a good set up for it and not that much heat where I am, so ymmv). She was very comfortable, with no feathers on her breast she could dig into cool dirt and had an easier time with the heat than most of my other hens. She laid maybe a dozen eggs, I incubated all of them but none developed- I have a handful of roosters but none with the balance required to manage har I guess. We'll see if she makes it through her second winter.
Sexing them shouldn't be too hard by 6-8 weeks based on size and comb/wattle.

 

[3KillerBs]

One of my pastors is a commercial chicken farmer.

I actually give him eggs occasionally because his attempts to raise a few Cornish X hens to use as family layers have failed due to them eating like crazy then laying poorly then dying young.

 

[CNJ]

I'd like to keep one or two broilers from this batch with a rooster and try to incubate some. Are do they start laying about the the same age?
Any good threads on that or tips in how they are different to keep vs eggers?

I bred a Breese rooster to 2 over weight Cornish x hens. They started laying about 5 to 6 months old. Its a good thing, I started collecting the fully formed small eggs early because the hens eventually blew their guts out. I should have put them on a diet when they were 1 month old instead of at 8 week old. The chicks hatched from small eggs grew big and eat a lot of food. The hens averaged about 8 to 9 lbs and roosters averaged about 10 to 12lbs at 4 to 5 month old. The second generation brother to sister chicks weighed 4 to 5lbs dressed at 3 month old and they were tender at that age. The ones that I kept for breeding grew large like the first generation at 4 to 5 month old. I will be setting my 3rd generation line probably next year.

I am pretty sure you can breed your Cornish X, but you will need to feed your breeders once a day starting at 1 month old. Its easier said than done, since they look so adorable at that age.