Weird question about cornish Xs - Anyone know?

[gritsar]

At what age do cornish X hens typically start laying? I thought I remembered reading that they are generally late layers.
The reason I ask - we culled all our extra cornish X cockerels, leaving me with 1 cockerel and 8 pullets. We are 99.9% certain that the pullets are indeed pullets. But now at nearly 15 weeks old I've noticed that most of the pullets are getting reddish in the face and combs. Still have very little in the way of wattles and their combs are small.
If it were any other breed I would say that they are getting close to laying age.
Thoughts?

 

[Olive Hill]

Did you look in Jeff's CornishX Breeding thread? I'm not positive but it seems like somewhere in the beginning of that thread he posted the age at which the F1 hens he used started laying.

 

[gritsar]

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I don't know about Jeff's page. Do you have the link? Thanks

 

[Olive Hill]

It's just a thread in the Meat Birds section of BYC. I believe it's called "Cornish x Breeding Program Updates" or something similar. It's a hot topic, should be near the top.

 

[Olive Hill]

Here it is: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=301996

 

[big medicine]

Most broiler type cornish X's do not live long enough to lay, if not from butchering, than by dieing on their own. Against my better judgement, and to settle an arguement with my daughter we kept a pullet out of her fair meat pen chicks once. Maybe if you keep them on a very restricted diet you could keep their size down enough to get them to point of lay age. They get huge and just can't hold up, heart failure probably. The parents of these broilers are considerably different, I am told, as this is a major trade secret, to keep you from being able to hatch your own, having to always buy replacements, kind of like hybreed garden seeds.

 

[gritsar]

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Thanks

 

[ninjascrub69]

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i've had several cornish X hens get to laying age, and their relativly active considering their size.

 

[ninjascrub69]

oops forgot to answer the question. They usually start laying somwhere between 20 And 30 weeks old (based on my birds)

 

[gritsar]

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Thanks to you too ninja! The whole point of this little "experiment" has been to raise them as layers. Commercial house culls is how my DH's mom got all her laying hens, back in the day.
My pullets are also active, except for my blind one, but she does okay too. My CX rooster walks everywhere, except when there's food involved; then he runs.