Raising Cornish X chicks with other types?

[Sunny Side Up]

Last Sat I bought some chicks from our feed store. I got 9 standard breed pullets and 3 Cornish Xs. I've only processed standard breed or mixed breed roos before but have heard such rave reviews about the Cornish Xs that I just had to try them.

I thought this would be a good way to get experience with the breed, instead of being overwhelmed with 25 of them at once. I thought I could keep these 3 together with the others while they're little & fuzzy, then when they feather out & can be left outdoors at night I'll separate them and finish raising them in a small pen of their own.

Right now I'm putting all 12 out in a baby tractor in the grass during the day, and bringing them onto the patio after dark. They have water but not feed in their box at night. They're only 1 week old and already the Xs are visably larger, and I'm noticing more poo in the grass & in the box than usual. They're eating Flock Raiser, because I'm feeding ducklings now too.

At what age do you think I should separate the Xs from the others? And at what age are they ripe and ready to process?

 

[Nemo]

We butchered our first load (25) of Jumbo Cornish X Rocks early this month. An experienced friend told us eight weeks old. We weighed two (before feathering and cleaning), and they were about 6.5 to 7.5 pounds. When we cleaned them, we found they were starting to put on some fat... Just enough to make them tasty.

As for separating them, I don't know what to tell you. We had ours separate from our fifteen layers right from the start, so that we could give them different feed. We had been told that the Corks needed different feed so that they're legs would grow to support they big bodies.

 

[graykristen]

Cornish Crosses will have leg problems if not given the proper feed nutrients. I would recommend going to the Fertrell website.

We butcher them at 8 weeks and have a dressed weight range of anywhere from 5-7 pounds. We even had a 9 ponder! We're butchering 300 this week.

 

[mommy9994]

I raise them separate for the first 5 weeks, then they go out with the rest. They get so much bigger than the others, that they will trample them in the brooder.

I feed them flock raiser and have a oyster shell hopper-- no leg issues here. Mine also free range, I think that helps with the leg issues too.

 

[UncleHoot]

I've raised cornish x's with my standard breed chicks on two occasions, and haven't had any problems. They do grow a lot bigger, but they are also much more lethargic. The other chicks will just wait their turn for the feed, if they have to. I never separated mine until they got processed.

 

[Sunny Side Up]

So far everyone's getting along in the baby tractor and in the box at night. The Xs are already growing faster than the others, and there seems to be more poop than I remember from other batches of chicks. But so far they don't seem to be eating more than usual. The 9 Standards & 3 Xs share a "flying saucer" style of chick feeder and empty only about half each day. I imagine their food consumption will increase soon.

The Xs are going to have to make do with eating the Flock Raiser like everyone else. With only 3 of them I can't justify buying them their own special bag of feed, even if it were readily available in my area, which it isn't.

I'd like to know if you have any recommendations for supplements to the Flock Raiser that might help them avoid any health problems. Their tractor is on grass each day, and they'll stay in this confined-on-grass setting up to the end. I don't like my meat birds to get too much exercise, but like them to have access to greens, bugs & dirt.

 

[pdpatch]

We had one cornish x type this year, it was raised with the other broilers until about the 8th week. we finaly found the time to butcher it at about the 10th week and it was about 9 and 1/2 pounds dressed. The reason we moved it to another pen was the other broilers were using it as a perch.

We tired to encourage it to walk around by continually raising it food and water as it grew. we feed them the same starter/grower feed as the broilers and layers got for all of it's 10 weeks, we used a generic water soulable viatimins starting at about 2 to 3 weeks.

The starter/grower feed was a min 18% protein we got from the local farm store. Because is just got the butchering equipment done we did not switch it to a finisher feed for this one bird, but plan on it next year.

 

[miss_jayne]

thanks for this thread! getting cornish X and mixed in a few weeks. all this info will help greatly!

 

[pdpatch]

Some suggest that you take away there feed at night to help slow down growth. We didn't do that and our one was ok. But it was just one bird, so I can't say if we just got lucky or what we did will work for all large body type chickens. We got our one in a all male assortment of heavey broilers from McMurry's , they call there cornish crosses Jumbo Broilers I think.


Tom

 

[Nemo]

The big advice I got from an experienced friend about feeding them was to feed them twice a day. Give them enough food, but don't let them have food all day, as they will eat whatever is there. I started calling mine "the pigs" the second week, because they really were.