I was given 3 hens last year and 1 rooster of mixed breeding and now have over 60 birds. A man stopped by and bought some of them to eat. He asked me if I would be interested in raising some meat birds for him. I would love to do this but I am very new to the bird world. I was thinking that I could cross some dark cornish and some barred rocks. Would this produce some good eating birds? Is there anything I should know about attempting this cross? Thanks so much for any suggestions.
I asked a related question in the thread titled "Cornish Cross" posted on Jan. 9. You might be interested in what was said there.
You can do the crossing but you don't have a guarentee that you are going to get the mix provided with birds that are bred by hatcheries for meat. They get to fryer size in 8 weeks and roaster size in 12 weeks. It probably will take longer than that to get you cross to meat size and the longer they grow the tougher they get. Also with the dark cornish and barred feathering, you will hav dark pin feathers to deal with. The meat crosses from the hatchery are white.
I read somewhere that the barred rocks are good meat birds by themselves. Do they have dark pin feathers? Are the dark feathers harder to remove? I apologize for being so uninformed, but I am so new to this...thanks so much for being so helpful.
Most of the commercial broilers that you buy at KFC or your local grocery store are the result of 4 way crosses. The breeders maintain grandparent lines and parent lines and the meat birds are usually 4 way crosses. Some of those birds are valued at several thousands of dollars each. As Rokimoto points out, the 2 way cross birds that aren't kept for breeding purposes wind up in stores as well.
By Infomaniac on Wednesday, January 16, 2002 - 09:47 am:
You can buy "meat birds" as chicks from hatcheries and raise them for other people, if you want to go that way.
Good luck,
By Japman117201 on Wednesday, January 16, 2002 - 06:17 pm:
(My incubator is here in the room with my computer and chicks are hatching. Its fun to hear.)
By Mamahen33 on Wednesday, January 16, 2002 - 08:52 pm:
By Infomaniac on Wednesday, January 16, 2002 - 10:47 pm:
The reason that the commercial birds are white is so that the little (pin) feathers that the plucker misses are hard to see. If you could see them, the bird would look like it needs a shave. I don't care about it because I roast our birds and remove the skin before serving. So, I don't care if there are ugly pin feathers visible or not. It is a cosmetic issue. On white birds, they're still there too, you just don't notice them so much (like a hairy leg ... blond or black ... one you notice more than the other!)
The commercial Cornish Cross meat birds grow so fast they often have leg problems and they have a relatively high post natal mortality. I see McMurray is offering now a "Cornish Capon" that grows more slowly, has fewer leg problems and better "livability".