Seeking data on making a dual purpose breed.

[Nchucktown sc boy]

I'm looking to try to make a stable strain of birds mixing Orpingtons, Brahmas, and Jersey Giants. Does anyone have experience with crossing any of these breeds? I'm looking for a good dual purpose breed that will be nice, sweet, and gentle tempered while large enough to make an impression on anyone I show them to.

 

[NatJ]

I'm looking to try to make a stable strain of birds mixing...

If you just pick one, you will have a stable strain much faster, because you won't have the mixing.

Is there a reason you want to mix them?

Orpingtons, Brahmas, and Jersey Giants.... I'm looking for...nice, sweet, and gentle tempered while large enough to make an impression on anyone I show them to.

Any of those three breeds has a good chance of doing what you want, with no mixing at all. They should all be fairly large and fairly good tempered.

I'm looking for a good dual purpose breed

I think you are going to have trouble with that. The usual idea of a good dual purpose breed is a good layer, and they grow quickly to a size with a good amount of meat for butchering (especially important for the males.)

As regards eggs, none of those are known as particularly good layers. At least two of them are known for going broody (and they do not lay while broody). But if you are content with their level of laying, there is no real reason to cross them-- using any of those pure breeds would be fine.

As regards meat, none of those will grow quickly, and none will have much meat at young ages. If you are willing to raise them for quite a while, you will eventually get big meaty birds from all of them-- but by that point, they are old enough that they are not very tender. So you can have a big chicken stew, and MAYBE a big roast chicken (iffy on that one), but you are not going to get nice-sized fried chicken.

For meat, any other large chicken is going to have the same problem. Either they grow lots of meat quickly and then have health problems because the rest of their body cannot keep up (Cornish Cross). Or they grow bones and organs and such to a good size, and only put on the big muscles once they have enough body to support it. The slower growth can let them be healthy, but they don't have much meat until a much older age than people usually prefer to butcher them. Older chickens are less tender, they eat more feed compared to the amount of meat they produce, and you have to spend more months housing and tending them (as compared with the Cornish Cross that produce most of the chicken meat you find in grocery stores, or even as compared with the kind of "dual purpose" breed that grows quickly to a medium size and then stops.)

Does anyone have experience with crossing any of these breeds?

No direct experience, but I've read about quite a few other people's projects, and about people raising the pure breeds.

If you want to mix chicken breeds for fun, and end up with ones that grow slowly to a large size, where the hens start laying at a late age and produce a medium number of eggs, and the temperament you want, then your ideas will probably work fine. But you aren't going to end up with a super-chicken, and what you do produce will not be a stable strain until you have put in quite a lot of years of work.

I do not know whether you are more interested in the process or the result. If you expect to enjoy the process, go ahead. But if you just want the right result fast, you will probably happier if you buy a pure breed that already has the traits you want (of your three, I think Brahma might be closest. Or I may just have a soft spot for Brahmas, which makes me a bit biased in their favor.)