Lakota Sioux Reservation

[pongoid]

Hello,

I am in South Dakota on the second largest reservation in the state. (Guesses welcome)

I have read alot about chicken on your forums and decided to join.

My wife and her family have a sustainable housing, energy, and agriculture project fledging (pun intended)
Part of that is trying to grow plants and animals native to South Dakota for food.

I know that chickens are not but we all decided that organic chickens and eggs was something we desired. We may attempt to catch some grouse and prairie chickens later for farming when we have more experience.

Anyway, being a novice I made a classic mistake. I bought 3 Black sex link pullets from my local Farm and Fleet and (dum de de dum) 3 non-sexed Cornish Crosses. I reasoned that if I killed the chicks or things went horribly awry I might perhaps get some broilers out of the deal and if things went well I could breed the Cornish Cocks to the BSL's.

But your site said the Cornish X's usually tear up the hens and aren't worth the trouble.

So my question is...my chicks are 4 weeks old (geez them CornishX's are scary growers..are they genetically modified or is it just old fashioned breeding) and I'd like to sex the crosses. Do I have to wait for the emergence of secondary sexual characteristics?
I read someplace else about Caponizing. I have had quite a bit of small animal surgical experience so I think it might be easy for me.

Lastly...the template.

(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens? 4 weejs ago.

(2) How many chickens do you have right now? 6

(3) What breeds do you have? BSL & Cornish X

(4) How did you find out about BackYardChickens.com? Google search

(5) What are some of your other hobbies? Too many to list. But I have raised numerous reptiles, chinchillas, tarantulas, rabbits, hedgehogs and parrots.

(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share. One hairless Rat Terrier, one mixed breed rez dog (great dane rottweiler maybe), 4 kids and one on the way. I am/was a bachelor level biomedical researcher.

 

[Falcon61]

There just something that happens when you cross a cornish with rocks . the x grows so fast they never reach materety without being crippled. so you cant really breed them, just eat them.

 

[Falcon61]

when they start having trouble walking its time to eat'em. or before. most say 6-8 weeks

 

[pongoid]

I just read on the ebeyfarms site that you can get Cornish crosses to maturity without flip or other problems if you put them on food restriction and out on natural forage. But they are bad layers.

 

[Falcon61]

heres a good site http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html
rocks and orps are good dual purpose, leghorns and rhode islands for eggs.

 

[BarkerChickens]

The Cornish Xs are usually butchered before they are of mating age, so I don't think you'll have anything to worry about.

 

[BarredBuff]

from Eastern Kentucky.

 

[Toast n Jelly]

 

[Ga.chickenman]

and

from Ga.

 

[pongoid]

Well that's a problem then because I do not yet know how to butcher and pluck a chicken.

Maybe the local butcher can do it for me.

We will see if I can diet restrict them. They are 5 weeks old and they go outside for good this week.

Its still snowing here!