Do any one can give me any advise on how to breed boiler chickens?
Question by Mias: Do any one can give me any advise on how to breed boiler chickens?
I have White Rock chickens and am getting Cornish Game chickens next week. Do any one can give me any advise on how to breed boilers. I know what type of feed to give them, but one thing is for sure, if the breed is not right, The results won’t be right either.
Give your answer to this question below!
2 Responses to Do any one can give me any advise on how to breed boiler chickens?
Leave a Reply
You probably already know that the best broilers are a cross between the White Rock and the Cornish chicken. I would say you need to keep the White Rock Chickens with Cornish Roosters or vise versa in order to get the cross you want for a top broiler. The right birds will grow rapidly into a broiler by about 6 weeks of age. You are right about the breed being important. I grew up on a family farm. We bought chicks from a place like McMurray (www.mcmurrayhatchery.com) and raised the chicks for egg production. The White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds were Grandma’s favorites. The chicks were bought straight-run and most roosters were butchered for meat. Sometimes Mom bought some mixed chicks or fancy breed chicks but most were Leghorns. I always wondered why our drumsticks were so small. When I was an adult I bought some chicks too. I wanted eggs but I also wanted a variety of birds. I ended up with some Cornish X Rocks (a hybrid). There was the big meated chicken from the grocery store. Now I knew why our drumsticks were so small when I was a kid. Check out McMurray if you have not aleady. When I was a kid they had the most interesting calenders that hung on the walls at local feed stores and in my Grandma’s house.
BTW the most important nutrient for any livestock is an abundant supply of fresh, clean water.
cold_fearrrr
December 11, 2012 at 4:50 pm
I agree with cold. I would like to do the same thing, but I need to get a white Cornish rooster somewhere. Seems to be a shortage of them right now. I would like to use a white Cornish because then the offspring of him and the White Rock hens will also be white, which makes them easier to pluck. (The little hairs you miss will not show up so much. On a dark-feathered bird, you see the hairs on the plucked bird and it looks like a French lady’s legs.) The dark Cornish are very beautiful, however, so I might just go with one of those instead.
Also agree about Murray McMurray hatchery. I’ve bought a lot of chicks from them and have never had any problems with them. Nice people there too.
Oh, another thing: I’m not sure if you can trust the White Rock hens to brood the eggs. You may have to incubate them yourself. The Cornish hens, however, are very smart (for chickens) and are good brooders. They are also escape artists, and will go and hide their nests in the woods if they can.
Brian G
December 11, 2012 at 4:52 pm