Standard Cornish vs. Cornish-X

[Brunty_Farms]

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Those numbers are a no brainer. You averaged a 1-3 lbs heavier and you did it a month before the others were ready. Taste..... they were tasty.... and they tasted like good quality chicken! The difference you noticed was the age.... if you would have processed the cornish x rocks at 11 weeks... you would have had the same results. There would have been more of a bite to them.

To me, it's common sense to go with the bird that produced the best numbers. Regardless if your feeding your family or trying to make an extra income. These topics always end up the same way they started. You have some that understand the benefits of both, DP and Hybrids... you have some that hate DP..... and some that hate Cornish x.

I personally like them both. It's nice to have a DP breed that dresses around 4 lbs and can be used in some unique dishes where their flavor shines.... and have the cornish x at the same 4 lbs tossed on the grill for an amazing BBQ.

 

[Buster52]

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Exactly my point. There is no need because that is not their purpose. It is not what they were bred for. They were bred to be short lived big meat producers. That is what makes them unhealthy to grow to adulthood. There is no need for them to survive past a young age, so longevity is not what is selected for. The industry doesn't care if they can live past the slaughtering period. Therefore, it makes no sense to suggest they will be healthy beyond that point.

So, in the end I get back to where I started when you objected. Part of the reason I don't want to raise them is because I don't consider them to be healthy animals.

Joel Salatin has raised hundreds of thousands of CX in his years. He calls them the "race cars of the chicken world," meaning you drive them hard and you drive them fast because you don't care if you get 200,000 miles out of them. They aren't built for it. And that comes to me from a friend of mine who just came back from a year's apprenticeship with him, working side by side with him every day for a year.

That's fine for Joel, fine for you, and fine for my friend, but it is not fine for me.

ETA
On hybrid vigor, actually when you consider the fact that one side contributes the large frame, while the other contributes the fast growth rate, it is easy to see how that could make a huge difference in the health of the offspring from that of the parents.

 

[NYREDS]

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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.

At a county fair I judged a few years ago a kid brought in a year old Cornish X. I could barely pick it up but it was a beautiful, healthy bird. I've seen several posts on this board by people who have kept them until they started to lay. If you control their feeding & thus their growth rate they mature normally & don't know why they couldn't live as long as Hybrid layers.
Not sure what all the emotional responses are about. They're chickens. If you like them raise some however you choose. If you don't like them don't raise them but as far as I'm concerned it's not a moral issue.

 

[TimG]

If you give a kid all the food he can eat and let him camp out on the couch, he likely won't live as long as a kid with better eating and exercise habits. Not much difference with Cornish Crosses.

 

[Buster52]

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To tell the truth, neither do I. Guess it's like football. Question the qualities of someone's favorite team and they can get kinda excited about it.

 

[FortWorthChicks]

 

[jaku]

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All birds have been selectively bred, but most can live past 12 weeks old and don't die at that young age due to organ failure.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "natural". For me, the Cornish Cross just ain't. They are born of an industry that considers animals to be machines, and are the extreme example of what happens with such thinking.

That and they can talk!

No, wait... that's the dog. Never mind.

Again... that's an assumption... I don't see where people are getting these from? They live to breeding age just fine. I have 8 females right now that are thriving and literally are getting frustrated with all the snow... they find a piece of grass and they run to it.

l understand that cornish x's might not be for your but try not to make false assumptions on the breed based on false literature, pictures on the web, or even news. I read an article on Mother Earth News about cornish x's and they were slammed by them for no reason. There is a fine line between eye candy and losing money when raising chickens for meat... bottom line you lose money on heritage (unless you sell them for $5-6 / pound). SO maybe it's not about the money and your looking for flavor, well since flavor is affected by the amino acids a bird develops as it ages... it's not hard to raise a cornish x to 15 weeks and get that same flavor. In return you will get a 14 lb dressed weight chicken with the exact flavor of the dp breeds. Now the argument comes down to what? How pretty they look in your yard? I respect that... I will respect the fact that 20 different breeds of roosters are eye candy when grazing over pasture. I would believe that, over the argument that they taste better, or heart problems, or they are not natural.

Chickens are chickens.... the only thing that really effects the taste is age, feed, and how they are raised. There is a very slight difference in taste between breeds and 95% of people wouldn't taste the difference anyways. The difference between a 15 week old cornish and a 15 week old dark cornish is what? It's not taste... especially if they were allowed to graze over the same pasture... my cornish x hens graze just as far as my buckeyes (which buckeyes are supposed to be aggressive foragers) the difference would be in how much meat you would get from each bird. For my efforts, time, money... I would stick with the one that is the most efficient.

But then define efficient? Buying chicks every year from a hatchery is not your thing... and I respect that above all. You can't argue the fact that Cornish x's come from an outside sources, not like hatching your own. But for some, hatching your own just takes to much time... My point is... there are legit reasons to want / not want cornish x's and there are some that are based on absurd assumptions. When I hear people say I'm not raising cornish x's because they taste like mush, they are lazy, and die easy... I just want to make sure they are not mislead because those are assumptions.

I've raised both.... heritage and hybrids and they both have their place. I've raised them both to breeding age no problem.... so I guess the next thing would be to see how the taste in side by side comparison in a soup?

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/1855_dscf2480.jpg

Very well put- I believe that most people who bash Cornish X's have either never raised them, or made only a halfhearted attempt then gave up. They are undeniably great birds.

 

[jaku]

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What hoops? Cornish X's are only more difficult than other breeds because you can leave other chickens completely alone to find they're own food and water and they'll probably do ok. It's not that Cornish X's are hard, it's that other breeds are so easy.

 

[jaku]

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But, many chefs also take themselves WAY too seriously. I'd really like to see a blind taste test done. I would doubt most chefs would get it wrong, and some of them that got it right would be due to a lucky guess. Wine experts swear by their knowledge also, yet I recently saw a study done in which they proved that even many "experts" can't tell the difference between a $10 bottle and a $100 bottle. Plus, I don't know that I trust the opinion of chefs- a lot of "chef" food is awful.

 

[jaku]

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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.

So do you save all of the seeds from your garden vegetables every year and plant them exclusively the next? By your definition, what is "sustainable?"