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Why are you wanting to cross the Bresse? Traditionally it is considered "the best" meat quality dual purpose though it does have size limits. For carcass proportions it's very good and is the major reason it's called a great table bird. Selection of breeders for carcass size at early age would move it in good direction. Does it taste better? Yet to try one and honestly wonder if there is hype. You know, all things French in cooking is better type thing. They also claim the Marans is excellent and again another French bird. Which by the way was developed in England from a French land race that laid darker eggs.
If we look at the Orpinton we are basically looking at a Plymouth Rock. They are almost identical in utility- slower to mature, large frame that fills out as adult and about 200 eggs per year. Looking back in the meat industry prior to the development of CornishX the Plymouth was used for hybrids. How it was done was to use the fast maturing New Hampshire as the dam and larger frame of Plymouth for the sire. Plymouth and Orpington will be of good size in 14 weeks but much of that is frame and less meat. In conjunction with a fast mature plus the added hybrid vigor resulted in fine meat birds. Carcass quality (proportions) of a fine table bird. It's a continual process of crossing each year of the two lines which is sustainable. It just requires more space as your keeping two breeds. Mating pens for each breed to continue and then crossing them for your better meat bird once or twice per year. That makes for a lot of chicken! Cockerel culls from two flocks and then your hybrids.
Hybrid vigor is when your cross of two lines results in a bird that outgrows either of it's parent stock. All meat birds are hybrid. They say the CornishX is a A-B to C-D. Use of four lines. How true that is is hard to say as that's trade secret. Who knows? Maybe it's a two line cross and the industry leaks out it's four lines to make it seem impossible to recreate. Industry espionage and deception.
I honestly don't know anything about maturity or growth of Bresse. There is a Bresse for meat thread here but as typical you don't get much data to go on. Estimates of weights and people growing to 6+ months does not provide a clear picture of a birds performance. Hopefully you'll stay on and provide some good data for us.
You shouldn't be concerned about inbreeding unless it comes to lower hatching rates. The lines vigor suffers if gross inbreeding is done over a decade. Line breeding can be done for a life time. There are 30 year plus closed flocks out there with excellent vigor. I picked up hatching eggs this spring from a line that dates back to the 70's. Closed flock of birds and hatched 15 of 19 eggs. As for the discoloration they are still chicks. See how they grow out and you might as well use them until you find better stock. We all gotta work with what we have or can obtain.
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