I'm Confused how do Hatcheries get Cornish Cross hatchlings?

[Oddyseous]

So.... health problems after 8 weeks, no not all the time but very often. What are these hatcheries doing to get fertile eggs to sell chicks? Are they all lab grown or something?

 

[HuffleClaw]

Yeah.... I wanna know too. I’d guess limited feed to help keep their weight down? Idk...

 

[Parront]

The Cornish Cross is made from 4 different lines. Grandparents produce the parent lines which are bred to produce what is called a "terminal" cross. It will never reproduce the way its parents or grandparents did. You can get them to breed with much care, but the breeders do a lot better a lot easier. Not easy, but easier.

 

[jeepgirl13]

I believe the cornish cross is made by breeding a cornish hen to another breed of bird I cant remember.

I dont think the hatcheries are breeding the cornish cross with each other to get more cornish cross, but instead have a breeding pen with the cornish games heans + whatever rooster you use to make the cross. This is how they get fertile eggs and keep a constant supply of the birds.

 

[featheredplanets]

Aren’t they made by breeding Cornish and Plymouth Rocks? I thought they’re hybrids, like red sex links, so they wouldn’t breed true.

ETA: Or does breeding Cornish X to each other just result in a heavier bird?

 

[jeepgirl13]

Aren’t they made by breeding Cornish and Plymouth Rocks? I thought they’re hybrids, like red sex links, so they wouldn’t breed true.

I've heard they have a huge problem breeding because of the large breast and weak joints.

I'm not sure what the other cross is. I just know the cornish hen part. Lol

 

[sourland]

The Cornish Cross is made from 4 different lines. Grandparents produce the parent lines which are bred to produce what is called a "terminal" cross. It will never reproduce the way its parents or grandparents did. You can get them to breed with much care, but the breeders do a lot better a lot easier. Not easy, but easier.

This or something similar is how it is done.

 

[Parront]

Here is some info if you like about the popular Cobb500 Cornish-X: https://www.cobb-vantress.com/en_US/products/cobb500/

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

White rock hens crossed with Cornish roosters. However I heard that Cornish roosters are really mean so I'm going to try my own experiment: White Rock Rooster crossed with Cornish hens. I won't get as many eggs but I don't need to supply the whole state, lol. I'm banking on this experiment, so I hope it works!

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Commercial cornish crosses/broilers, as stated above, are a 4-way hybrid.
A long long time ago they were made by crossing a Cornish chicken to a plymouth rock but these days they're actually a proprietary set of varieties carefully selected for food production. To be honest you'd be hard pressed to call the birds that go into, say, a Cobb500 a cornish or a plymouth rock, though once like 60 years ago they probably were.

So these distantly-related-to cornish/rock chickens are kept in four groups of roosters and hens.
Then they cross those chickens together producing the first layer of hybrids. These chickens are already quite large and heavy and are kept on special diets to improve livability. Because they're a hybrid cross they're bigger than both sets of parents, a sort of hybrid vigor. Then they take the roosters and hens from those groups and cross them to double down on the hybrid vigor. The resulting chickens are heavier than both the parents who in turn are heavier than both grandparents.

Meanwhile, the healthy and sound grandparent lines just get to breed among themselves without hybridising and stay clean so they can always make more of the next two generations. Hence - babies that get HUGE but have healthy easily replicable parental lines.

Birds like red/rainbow rangers, etc also follow this formula but throw in some heavy heritage layer like a Rhode Island Red instead of one of their proprietary production birds. The result is still the same - a fast growing 4-way hybrid chicken - but a little more active, lighter, longer and better at laying eggs. They're made the same way.