Ross Cobs as meat birds

[dancingbear]

Becky, thanks for the info about the Kune Kunes, I'll do some checking and see if they can be had here. That's probably a far-off dream, though, local extra piglets for cheap will be out first pigs, I'm sure. I do want something special, eventually, though.

If we can't get Kune Kunes here, there may be a similar breed we can get. It's given me something to research, and an alternate point of view on the pigs. My DH has been thinking of hogs that get huge, I'm starting to think maybe we'd do better with somewhat smaller, easier to handle pigs. Never of us are spring chickens, we don't have the strength and agility we had years ago, for dealing with large animals. A 150-250 lb. hog would be quite enough to handle for dressing out, is what I'm thinking. We dress out a deer or 3 in the fall, the weight is considerable to move around, hang for skinning and dressing. I know we wouldn't be skinning the pigs, but the scraping, etc, I'm thinking maybe smaller would be more do-able.

I don't know if out govt. has any public education programs like yours, I haven't heard of any. If they do, they might let you teach the modern big ag methods only, and not let you show alternative ways. Our govt. is big on chemicals and the companies that make them, sad to say.

 

[jacyjones]

I am also in the UK and bought 13 Ross Cobb cross as we wanted to raise our own meat birds. I have to say I will never do it again. Our idea was to raise the birds and use one every so often when we wanted a chicken meal. Unfortunately they are designed to put weight on so fast that we should have killed them all at about 13 weeks. They had huge appetites and were quite aggressive about food. My poor horse could not eat her breakfast as her bowl was mobbed by chickens. They would all charge at me when they saw me coming and as they got so big I was quite scared of them in the end. It got increasingly difficult to catch one to kill and the meat was not actually very nice. This may have been cos we let them get too big. I hope your experience is better than ours!! I think we would have been better with birds that grow slowly but they are expensive to buy and we only found out about them after our first experiment!!

 

[willheveland]

Hey becstar,when you asked about our Cornish breed,I believe we got help from you guys.I think the word Cornish originally came from Cornwall,England. Will
p.s.can you post a picture of those Ross Cobbs?

 

[becstar]

Yeah, I guessed they were originally from Cornwall, however, I wanted to know if you guys had 'adopted' it as your main meat bird if you know what I mean. Here, the Ross Cobb seams to be our version of the main meat bird. Am I making sense?! Anyway, I think I have ascertained from other peoples posts that this is indeed the case. Thanks for the info anyway. Yes, I will send you photos of my chicks, and I'll try and find some piccies of a fully grown Ross.

Thanks Jacy for your message. What a shame it didn't work out for you. MY RC's are only just coming up to 4 weeks, but their size is amazing (in a kind of creepy, that's so wrong way)! And like you said, they go absolutelt CRAZY for their food. How old were they when you put yours out to free-range? Also, at what age did you start despatching them?

If they are going to be Frankenchucks, then I woul drather raise a slower-growing pure breed like a Maran or something. Are you going to try again, and if so, what breed will you go for?

 

[SandraMort]

What is required to say "naturally grown"? Would that preclude conventionally grown table scraps? I'd like to give my birds organic feed, but they'll free range and get partly conventionally grown treats from leftovers. What would that make my birds & their eggs?

 

[Poultry Snob]

"Ross" refers to a line of meat chicken parent stock developed in America. For many years the "Ross male" was one of the best recognized male lines to use in the terminal cross for meat birds. The Ross brand is now owned by the Aviagen Company of Germany.


"Cobb" is the genetic line owned by Tyson. It is actually "Cobb-Van Tress." This is a genetic line hardly unknown in the US and certainly not exclusive to the UK, or anywhere else.

In all probability what is being talked about here is a bird whose father was a Ross and mother a Cobb. This is a very common combination. This terminal cross is a bird designed to fit the vast market for a live weight bird of 5 to 5.5 lbs at six weeks of age.

Those of you who believe that industrial meat chickens or the "Cornish Cross"of small-scale production are the results of mating of Cornish males and Rock (or Dorking, or Giants or anything else) are simply wrong. The term has become counter descriptive and should be abandoned. Meat birds have not been widely produced by crossing Cornish and Rocks for 60 to 70 years.

Likewise the term "dual purpose" should be discarded as non-descriptive. If anything most breeds in this classification should be called "neither purpose" Fantasies about raising Rhode Island Red (or any other "dual purpose breed) cockerels as meat fowl is a waste of time and money. The Reds and Rocks supplied by hatcheries should be considered egg layers and not meat producing birds. They are not great layers but certainly better in that role than as meat producers.

There are really only three types of chickens today; those bred for meat, those kept for the production of eggs for human consumption, and ornamentals.



http://www.cobb-vantress.com/



http://www.aviagen.com/

 

[becstar]

That is really interesting - thanks.

You said that, in essence, a chicken is either for eggs, meat or show, so what other types 'meat chickens' are there apart from the Ross and the Cornish? What do you eat?

Becky

 

[jacyjones]

Quote:
We had ours at about 5 weeks I think and they free ranged straight away. We ate the first 1 at about 10 weeks, I think, and the rest should have gone almost straight after.
I will not do it again because the slow growing ones are not easy to get round here and are too expensive to buy in to make it sensible to eat them. We were told that Sasso chickens are a good one to try. Google it and you should find some info. I wish you lots of luck - it is something I really wanted to work, I was worried I would get too attached to be able to eat the birds but by the end I hated them!!

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
I checked out the links you provided, and I see that the industrial strains of chicken are not the same as those available to the home poultry market. The first one calls the descriptions of the birds "product profiles", as if they're describing inanimate objects. That's unfortunately becoming a more and more common attitude, to think of meat animals as "products" rather than as "live creatures".

Those Ross-Cobb crosses are not available through most hatcheries that sell chicks for home meat production, at least not in the US. So while you are correct that they aren't unknown in the US, they are not known in the US to the average home grower.

If I were the CEO of a huge company that raises chickens for supermarkets, in those places I think of as "chicken concentration camps", I would probably want those. But most home raised poultry is being raised by people who don't want to raise thousands at a time.

Here are some links that show the Cornish-Rock crosses that no longer exist, according to you.

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Broil/BRKMeat.html

http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/category/meat_birds.html

It's possible that the ones on the McMurray site aren't Cornish-Rock crosses. They don't actually tell you what they are, so who knows. There are many other hatcheries that sell similar birds, but since they don't list them as "Avigen 78" or whatever, we have no way of knowing if that's what they actually are.

Most of us are aware that the Cornish-Dorking (or other combos) are not the Cornish-rock X's. That's what some of us are talking about, is something DIFFERENT from the Cornish-Rock X's.

I'm a smallholder, interested in raising meat for my own table, as humanely as I can, and I prefer a bird that, while it may be slightly less efficient, is healthier, more active, able to forage and make use of good pasture, and doesn't drop dead from CHF or have it's legs collapse. This is NOT a "fantasy", people are doing this all the time. There are Color Rangers, Rainbow Cornish, and others. Just because something doesn't fit the massive market model, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. I want to try various crosses until I find something that fits MY needs, not Tyson's.

The dual-purpose birds are generally birds that are good layers, but the roosters get large enough to be worth sending to freezer camp when you have too many of them. They aren't the huge frankenbirds, but they are perfectly good to eat. And as far as not being very good layers, my black Australorps lay an egg a day, except when moulting (once a year) or brooding. There are non-broody types a person can get that lay an egg a day, except for a yearly moult. Just how much better do you expect a hen to do? We don't all require absolute peak production of everything at all times.

A healthier bird is healthier food. Soft, mushy, bland, antibiotic laden meat that is chlorinated or irradiated before being packaged has become the industry standard. Many of us are no longer willing to continue consuming this inferior food. We're willing to do the work to provide a better alternative for ourselves. If you don't want to, that's your choice.

 

[Poultry Snob]

Quote:
I eat what is on the plate. LOL

At home the grandsons and I raise 25 broilers/ roasters a year for 4-H projects and the freezer. Since I know the right people we generally get Ross male line breeder cockerels generally not available to the public.

Real Cornish are exhibition birds totally unsuitable for meat production. They grow to slowly and are quite old before they reach a useable weight. They are also extemely inefficient and are unable to produce many fertile eggs by natural mating.

There are dozens of meat chicken lines available. Heritage (Perdue), Indian River, Lohman, Shaver, Hubbard, Arbor Acres, Eurobird, Hybro and on and on. For all practical puroposes they are all the same in a backyard situation.