Need Your Help!!! I want to have a flock i can raise/hatch/meat each each

[jwheeler]

after reading some posts im starting to learn that the "laying/meat" bird is not what i really want for my met birds like the barred rock. That i should cross the cornish with a delawear that way i can have my flock and hatch birds each year for meat but keep my same flock. If anyone has had any experience with this and have a better cross that would be great. i dont like the idea of birds getting so big they can not walk im happy with a smaller bird. I was thinking 10 delawear hens with 2 or 3? cornish roos. I want to put at least 10-20 birds in the freezer a year.

 

[Konra]

If you want meat and eggs, go with dual purpose birds. They usually lay around 200 eggs per year, so less than a laying breed like a leghorn, but get larger and meatier. I have barred plymouth rock, ameraucana, blue laced red wyandottes, and buff orpingtons. I just started my flock this year, but plan to let them brood in the spring to keep my flock numbers up.

 

[missnu01]

I think crossing a white rock with a Buff Orpington would give an awesome meat bird...large and meaty...also probably make for good layers. The meat birds that we order are not easy to replicate. Somebody put in the time breeding these things. But you can probably get close mixing rocks and cornish, and then perhaps add in a delaware? I don't know...but Cornish X are not just 2 breeds added together I don't think...
Ive thought about doing the same thing...and I figured I would try putting together cornish and something large, like a BO or White Rock, or something like that...and then using those with something else and see how that goes...then maybe cross back to the cornish, I don't know...

Then I think of all the birds I would have to keep to achieve doing this, and I decided I will just order meat birds each year. I really like the Cornish X. They are so cute...Little short chubby things following us all around the yard sleeping on our shoes and such.

You make me start thinking of trying to make my own meat birds again though. You have to keep breeding together breeds that are large but also grow fast...and birds that have a good shape for eating like the cornish.
I think I would have to change my whole view on chicken keeping to breed just meat birds though...then I thought about just hatching a whole lot of Orpingtons for meat and eggs both..But Orpingtons take quite awhile to get large enough to eat...Then I thought about maybe keeping one Cornish X rooster and just using AI to see what sort of mixes I can hatch with him...and then keeping those going...
I feel like a lot of dual purpose birds are not as good at either thing...Like a meat bird is great for meat..and egg layers are great for eggs, but dual purpose are great at neither...but are passable for both.


Maybe mix White Rocks and Cornish, and then Delawares and Cornish, and then cross those back together...and out of those chicks only keep the ones that grow fast and look tasty.

The cornish X we have right now have a lot of black feathers here and there, and that makes me wonder what all is in there...maybe chickens are like dogs and breeding together 2 Cornish X will give insight into what the original birds were that made the pair...I don't know.

Because 2nd generation mutts give you chicks that some are more like the grandparents..some will be one way and some will be the other.

Either way breeding your own meat birds is no easy task...especially if you try to compare your results to cornish X...

I would just start crossing cornish with all kinds of heavy breeds and just see what you get...then cross all those together...and see what that does...then maybe cross some of those 3rd generation chicks back to the delaware x cornish, or the rock x cornish, or even back to the cornish and just see what happens...

My problem will all dual purpose birds is that you have to feed them for so long before they are ready to eat...

 

[missnu01]

Cornish hens are also very likely to go broody, so having just a few can never be a bad thing. I'm going to get a couple maybe next year and see what I can make of it all...

 

[Life is Good!]

Please go back through this section of the forum a couple pages. You're not the first to ask this question and some previous posts have had excellent answers. Kizanne was doing an experiment on crossing - had dedicated pens to various parent stocks and cross breeding and record keeping and such...not sure if an update was ever given on that.

Different 'breeds' of birds have been developed for different 'traits'. There is nothing like the growth of a CX. There is nothing like the laying capacity of a Leghorn. However, if you're truly interested in trying to have the 'best' of both - get yourself a laying flock and order a small flock of broiler chicks to put in the freezer annually. Keep the layers year round, eat extra cockerals that are hatched out. That's what's worked best for our family.