White Chick Mystery? SWF?

[ksacres]

Commercial cross is a White Cornish rooster over a White Rock hen.

Purebred Cornish are naturally very large breasted with thick sturdy legs, but they do not have the fast growth (overgrowth) that the hybrid vigor provides. I used to have Dark Cornish (standards), they have tight feathering, so they are a LOT heavier than they look.

I had a few cornish X meat birds one year that. They are extremely slow when they are full grown, the pullets will lay, but as much as they EAT the eggs are not a good reason to keep them. The ones I had also had a very shabby life due to persistant bumblefoot and breast blisters. These birds are not designed to live to adulthood. It is a sad truth, one must decide if keeping something alive for the sake of keeping it alive is really the humane thing to do. There are some fates worse than death.

 

[ksacres]

Quote:
That is typical of a meat bird, all the energy goes into meat production, laying around conserves energy that goes into growth. The breathing issue is also typical, their bodies often develope faster than their organs can handle, this is also why they are prone to heart attacks.

This is one of the sad facts of producing more more more- there is no thought to the birds quality of life, only how to get the most meat in the shortest amount of time.

That's also why a lot of people on this board raise their own broilers and do it on restricted feed- slower growth gives the birds internal workings a chance to keep up.

 

[Dustin Biery]

Not to hi-jack this thread, but I am just going to throw my opinion in here...
Restricting feed on a bird that is bred to grow abnormally fast will often have the effect of starving them. Their bodys and metabolism is geared towards eating constantly, and by restricting their feed their metabolism doesn't just slow down.

 

[Porterfive]

Hi all, thanks for the posts. We've had her/him for about a week now and we don't restrict her diet and she/he doesn't eat all that much. She sits alot and is very "clingy" but that could be due to not being around other chickens...she's doing well and seems all around healthy. We're watching her to see if she's a him or a her, still hasn't changed much, so we'll see.