Standard Cornish vs. Cornish-X

[Bossroo]

UNSUSTAINABLE ??? Let's see the rate of reproduction is like... 1,000,000 Cornish X to one of Buckeye. Dark Cornish probably a little better, but not by much. Those breeds had their day on the dinner table because they were , bigger, better and cheaper than the fowl that came before them. Today, a better X bred bird came along that utilizes less resourses to make a larger tasty meal in a shorter amount of time. So, what type of bird feeds the hungry of this world? The Xrossbred chick was developed to produce MEAT and most efficiently in the shortest time possible, that is their sole mission. Not to dance around the rosey, or be all touchy, looksy, feely. Just because some refuse or unable to grasp a concept or educate themselves with each type of animal's needs to achieve proper husbandry practices for them, they start to critisise. Remember the old Scotish saying... " The eye of the master fattens the cattle." Oh, so true no matter what beast, fish or fowl one raises. Many of us don't have a problem raising these X bred meat birds and they happily thrive under our care. I wonder why? If one wants to glean the benefits of the Xbred's promise of a bauntiful and suculent fare, one has to buy the Xbred chick ( at a cheaper price that what one can produce by hatching their own) from the patent holder of the genetics who wants to recoup the millions of $$$s and years of research invested to create the X bred and do so at a lesser cost and yes, make a profit. Or, simply toddle over to Wally Mart and buy a whole processed and packaged chicken at $.69 a pound. Another Or choice, one can spend their own time and money trying to do the same.

 

[CARS]

Poor GoodEnough

I bet you never had a clue how passionate some of us are for/against the Cornish X did you??

I think the short answer is the Standard Cornish is to be raised like any other "normal" chicken. Cornish X's need some extra care to maintain their health but once you raise them for a few years you'll know whether they are for you or not.

Why not try a few of each???

 

[Buster52]

Quote:
Any bird that requires a non-renewable resource in order to be sustained is unsustainable. Your birds are coated with oil every time you order a new batch.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

1. They are not engineered to live past 10 or 12 weeks.
Yes, they are. You are very good at assuming things. Read more literature that isn't biased. Where do you think the parents/grandparents of these birds come from? Have you ever raised any? I have... I've seen them first hand and know that they are no different than the offspring that they produce. Basically they are different lines fed a stricter diet than their offspring. If you raise the parents on 24/7 feed you get the same end result. Your classifying them as a terminal breed or hybrid.... based on what you have read not experience. Just because they are used for meat on the mass scale that they are, doesn't make them any less different than your DP breeds. Chickens are chickens.

2. Nobody raises them past that on a regular basis the way we do heritage breeds, so there is no way to know if it can be done. Five or six hens (I see no mention of roosters) is not a scientific sampling. You would need a much larger sampling to determine what the morbidity rate was and whether or not that rate was acceptable.
And why not? Because of the assumptions that one makes? Or thinks? Why raise them if everyone tells you it's a bad idea? Why is it such a bad idea? I have 8 hens to be exact, the pictures are about 2-3 weeks old maybe older. I can get new ones for you if you would like. I didn't have any extra roosters available, they were all spoken for by my customers. It's rare for me to have even 8 hens (which by the way took 2 batches to get). Your right, I do need more sampling and 8 is not a good enough representation for all of them. But right now by picking 8 of the best hens... not one has died. We will see how long that last. I will keep some roosters out of the next good batch I get. I didn't like the growth rate of any of the roosters this year which is why I'm switching hatcheries.

3. There is a great deal of evidence of attendant physical problems even with Cornish X who are butchered when recommended at 6 to 8 weeks of age.
In commercial set ups yes.... not in the ones I've been raising in the past 10 years.

4. Seems to me you have mentioned losses higher than 10% for birds butchered within that time frame. It stands to reason morbidity would be even higher if they were frequently raised beyond their expected brief lifespan. "Fickle" I believe you called them. They are apparently even worse when raised in confinement, according to your reports. I do not want to raise a bird whose hold on life can be characterized as fickle.
LOL, Yes they are fickle. If you want to achieve the results desired in the time desired it can be a headache to get them all ready at the same time. It's more of an art than anything, so ya they are very fickle so to speak if your trying to achieve your goals. Everything comes into play, even the wind. Too much wind they get chilled... not enough and they get hot or even worse they stop eating. However don't assume that they are fickle as a breed/hybrid. They are very tough, I can raise them all day long with my eyes closed if I fed them a 16% chick grower and let them live out their life. However if you want them ready by a certain time...6-7 weeks... it's very hard to achieve that goal in a pasture based system.

I have, sometimes hitting 15% is where we end up by the end of a batch. However 5-8% is normal. Take in consideration the factors here... don't assume. Out of 100 chicks 2-3 die in transit which is normal for any shipped chicks. Lots of times I get perfect shipments. After that take another 1-2% for weak birds that will die within 3 days because they can not find the water or were just not strong enough. SO within 3 days I'm already down to 5% loss. Factor in the 1% for leg problems and 5% that didn't grow because of stunted genes... that is a total of 11% not including any weather run ins that I have, which happens all the time. Rain usually being the biggest problem or cold weather. Never have a problem with hot weather and it is 90 degrees here in the summer. Keep in mind that the stunted growth ones are not culls right on the spot... they are culls after processing. They are put into my freezer not my customers. They resemble the size of a DP breed at 14 weeks. So realistically only 1% is due to genetic issues, the rest is normal, which is the case with any chicks you raise. It seems like that I'm being protective of the percentage of bad genetics but it truly is only that low and only 2-4% in big commercial flocks which is still not bad. The reason why it's an issue is the fact that out of 100 thousand chicks. 4,000 are going to have leg troubles... and that is a lot of birds. But when you break it down to my level, give them exercise and put them on pasture your only talking 1 out 100 birds.... which given the genetics of this hybrid... that's awesome.

5. Those CX in your picture look remarkably small to me. I would have expected adult birds to be much larger. I have to wonder if you purposely selected the runts of the batch to raise to adulthood, which would then skew the results.

Man, you have a real bad tendency of assuming things. I don't mean to sound like a broken record but quit assuming, ask me first. If you understand genetics at all, you know enough to understand that if you pick the runts your not going to get very far. Those birds in that picture look to be 8-10 weeks I'm not exactly sure. However I do know that it took 400 birds to get those 8, so they were the biggest females out of those batches. So no, the results are not skewed... they look small because they being treated like broiler breeders... not the typical broiler that your used to seeing. I picked out the biggest females at 5 weeks of age and slowed them way down, so their bone structure could catch up to the muscle mass.

A good chef can make even a 4 year old rooster taste like a cornish game hen. So it's unfair to judge birds by a chef as each one is different even if they are all cooked the same way. I can tell you this, the BBW you raised this year tasted better than the store bought. Those were your own words... not exact but you get my point. Now if you let those same BBW grow to the age of a standard Bourbon or Holland... the taste would be extremely similar. A lot of those results are coming from biased organizations such as Mother Earth News.... they are horrible as they have no clue, basically a bunch of writers trying to be farmers.

Breeds are not that huge in taste difference. You could do a blind taste test with about 15 breeds.... get told exactly what's what.... repeat the test in a week... and you wouldn't be able to tell the breeds apart. Very small taste difference. It would not be like tasting chicken, turkey, duck, pheasant, or emu. All of those meats are very easy to distinguish apart. Chicken however is just chicken.... barely a difference in breeds... huge difference in age.

I'm sure this can go back and forth all day, but in the end facts are facts. Personal assumptions are simply opinions and everyone has one. We all know the old saying about assUmeing.....

 

[Bossroo]

Stop and think about it. Just how much oil did you use to produce your chicken dinner? Mine use considerably less feedstuffs ( less oil to produce) as well as power ( less oil),and time to produce more meat for my dinner than any other type of chicken out there. Also I don't have to run into town (oil useage) to purchase feed (oil used to produce it) for a laying flock year round ( more oil) so that I can hatch a few chicks( more oil used to produce electricity to run an incubator) from their eggs. Been there, done that and then I tallied up my numbers, wich gave a wake up call. To avoid running around in circles and then going broke, I changed what I was doing. I saved money and precous TIME to enjoy with my family. With my current method in the same time frame, I can enjoy 25 chicken dinners before you have eaten ONE. If I wanted to... I CAN be much more efficient than that in getting my dinner by traveling into town and buy an already fully roasted or Bar B Qued 4-4.5 pound chicken from any number of grocery stores for $5.00 each. A price that anyone of us simply CAN'T match. Econ 101... concept of power of efficiency in volume equates to savings. I can buy a Xbred chick for less money and use much less oil than I can hatch my own chick from my own home produced eggs. Think about it !
To expand on knowledge, Oil and gas is formed every minute 24 hours of the day ever since carbon based organisms have lived and died on this big blue marble.

 

[NYREDS]

Your birds are coated with oil every time you order a new batch.

I know I'm a little slow at times but what are you talking about?​

 

[CARS]

Quote:
I know I'm a little slow at times but what are you talking about?

Carbon Footprint, food miles, etc. His idea is that by hatching his own, and raising them on his own feed, that he is not impacting the environment.

(This is getting WAAYYY off-topic from the O.P.'s question, don't ya think???)

 

[Buster52]

Quote:
No, they're not. They are a terminal bird, meant to be slaughtered at that age or younger. They are not engineered to be any more than that. They are fast growing birds with good FCR efficiency that get very big very young. That is why you raise them along with everybody else who does, not because they will be successful long term backyard birds.

 

[blueskylen]

my 2 cents:

I have raised both the brown broilers and the cornish x

1 brown broilers - I processed them at 11 weeks - 3 to 4 lb roasters - nice looking birds, I had them contained in a building and run- not free ranged, but fed grasses daily. 3 died between peep and processing.

2 cornish x - I processed them at 7 weeks - 5 - 7 lb roasters - nice looking birds, had them contained in a bulding and run - not free ranged, but fed grasses daily. 4 died between peep and processing.

Taste: while the brown broilers had a more " chicken " taste, they were a bit stringy and chewy. cornish X were juicy and still had a much better taste than any store bought.

verdict : approximately the same cost for feed for both breeds, liked the looks of them both,

we ordered 60 more cornish X for this spring.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Quote:
No, they're not. They are a terminal bird, meant to be slaughtered at that age or younger. They are not engineered to be any more than that. They are fast growing birds with good FCR efficiency that get very big very young. That is why you raise them along with everybody else who does, not because they will be successful long term backyard birds.

Just because big companies say that they are terminal doesn't mean they are. That would be like me crossing a White rock and a Buckeye and saying the cross is terminal. They are terminal because I say they are.... That doesn't make much sense does it?

The same terminal cross that your referring to comes from a parent stock this isn't terminal. What makes the parents of these two lines any different than the cross that they produce? Nothing... Hybrid vigor is the overall goal in the cross. If the parents can stay alive long enough to breed... so can the offspring they produce. It's not rocket science.

There is no need for them to be successful long term in the backyard. Why would you want raise them after they are already big enough to process? They've served their purpose, even if I can breed them.... why would I? I couldn't do it cheap enough to justify the cost? It would cost me more to produce the chicks than what it would to buy them.

Basically I just tinker in the breeding of the 8 hens that I have. Realistically I will never be able to produce them cheaper than the hatcheries, especially when I get a thousand at a time because the price drops to $0.55 / chick. It's mainly a hobby... I like raising chickens and like having them around... mine as well mess around a bit if I can.