Cornish Rock meat chickens

[Wheezy50]

Has anyone raised these meat chickens before? I have had my other laying hens for a few yrs now, thought i'd try raising a few for meat this Spring. I'm going to start out small, 10 or less birds.

I'm trying to get an idea what size enclosure i'll need to keep these things in for 7-9 weeks. I will keep them in a brooder for the first few weeks in the garage, but then i'd like to transfer them outside.

Some online reviews say the Cornish X is a pain to raise. Just curious who might have had experience raising them

 

[Loco179]

I am doing these this year.

http://www.meyerhatchery.com/produc...ickens&grd_prodone_filter=PRODUCT_ID = 'RRBS'

A farmer by me raises these. He keeps his in chicken tractors. They seem to do very well. It takes a few more weeks for them to be ready. Still 9-11 weeks is pretty awesome.

Everyone I have talked to say the Cornish have their own issues. I prefer to have birds that take about the same effort as my layers. We still have some time for meat birds. I only want mine inside for a few week until they get out into the tractor.

 

[Jason R. Bruce]

Don't absorb too much of what those tie-dye wearing bloggers tell you about the Cornish-X online. Bottom line is, they're messy and inefficient eaters. If you can work around that, you won't have any complaints.

I would suggest you get about twice as many as you'd planned, just due to the amount of hassle involved in feeding/watering/butchering/packaging and whatnot. I couldn't justify the daily responsibilities for a handful of birds.

I think that's probably where all these people find "problems" with a particular bird... they have 3 so when they lose 1 it's devestating. I run batches of 25-50 of everything. For a brief period I had a few cycled batches crossing paths and ended up with 140 birds here at once, which was too much for me.

Here are some graduating photos of my crop from last year.

 

[danmdevries]

Never raised cornish cross but I've had several regular cornish hens. They were no different than the rest of my birds except they were able to hit the table in a year. The rest of my birds, mostly all layers with some dual purpose, aren't bulked up enough in their first year.

 

[trophyhunter]

You will be amazed at how quickly x-cross meat birds grow, as mentioned there's no real value in just raising a handful of them with the work involved, I do 50 at a time and that's a pretty full day start to finish with two guys doing the work when we slaughter them.

Day one into the broody box until they hit the freezer is nine weeks on average.

 

[PriestEG]

Don't absorb too much of what those tie-dye wearing bloggers tell you about the Cornish-X online. Bottom line is, they're messy and inefficient eaters. If you can work around that, you won't have any complaints.

I would suggest you get about twice as many as you'd planned, just due to the amount of hassle involved in feeding/watering/butchering/packaging and whatnot. I couldn't justify the daily responsibilities for a handful of birds.

I think that's probably where all these people find "problems" with a particular bird... they have 3 so when they lose 1 it's devestating. I run batches of 25-50 of everything. For a brief period I had a few cycled batches crossing paths and ended up with 140 birds here at once, which was too much for me.

Here are some graduating photos of my crop from last year.

this might be a stupid question, but with all that meat ready at once what do you do with it? im assuming you butcher and then freeze most of it right?


and a more general question, what would be a good beginner breeds? one breed for meat and a breed for laying. TIA