Enlighten me on Cornish hens, please.

[punkin]

DH mentioned yesterday about raising Cornish hens for meat.

Is Cornish a particular breed or just a fancy name for young meat birds?

If it is a breed, where would I find them?

I'm assuming that it would only take a few months to raise them for processing, so a tractor would be ideal. I would start them early spring and be able to have some in the freezer by late fall.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[keljonma]

Cornish is a breed. Here is the Henderson Breed Chart. Under the breed name are links for pictures and more information.

http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html#a



I would think you could get them from any hatchery - I know Murray McMurray Hatchery sells Cornish & crosses

 

[farmerlor]

We just got through raising Cornish X chicks from MacMurray. 10 weeks from hatch to freezer and they average about 6 pounds of the most wonderful looking chicken meat I've ever seen. Both MacMurray and Welp offer a Cornish Roaster chick. They're just a little bit slower growing if you want those big birds but supposedly they're not quite as prone to the heart attacks and leg problems that the Cornish Xs have due to their rapid weight gain. I think next time I'll get the Cornish roasters.

 

[dacjohns]

There are Cornish and Cornish Crosses (X). The cross is the typical meat bird and is not really good for anything else. They are designed to grow fast and are not good for eggs.

The Cornish game hen you buy in the store is a young Cornish X.

The plain old Cornish can also be raised for meat but it will not grow as fast.

Check out BackYardChickens for some in depth discussion of raising meat birds.

Some people do raise the X in a tractor but the Xs are good at foraging. They prefer to sit at the table.

 

[Anny]

You will probly get more people responding if you ask this question in the Backyardchicken.com forum.

 

[patandchickens]

Cornish hens, or Rock Cornish hens, that you buy in the grocery store are NOT Cornish breed. THey are simply the exact same birds sold as fryers/broilers/roasters, only they were processed really young and thus smaller.

If you want to generate them at home, buy the CornishX broiler chicks your feedstore sells as meat chickens (they may call them other things, but, whatever -- they are ancestrally from Cornish and White Rock lines, but have been so very heavily selected over the past 50+ yrs that they bear no resemblance to the parent breeds and cannot be recreated at home from those breeds).

You can certainly eat actual Cornish chickens (the breed, that is), and they are supposed to be tasty; but they will be not very much like supermarket chickens (be they 'cornish hens', fryers, broilers or roasters). They FAR FAR less feed-efficient or fast-growing or meaty; although tastier, because older at slaughter.

If you want to raise the feedstore CornishX meat chicks, they take about 3-4 wks to get to 'cornish hen' size, 4-5 wks to get to fryer or small broiler size; most people process them at 6-8 wks for a 4-7 lb (dressed weight) bird, although if you are careful in your management and willing to accept that they may die before you slaughter them, you *can* take them up as far as 12 wks or more (it ends up being pretty inefficient feedwise, but you can generate fairly large carcasses on whatever birds survive that long, like 10 lbs dressed weight sometimes)

They will taste more or less like supermarket chickens, though.

"Real" chickens, grown slowly and with a lot less meat on their carcasses, taste a LOT better, although they also have more texture to them.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Big Daddy]

We just processed 24 of the Cornish-x. They were 10 weeks old. Weighed an avg of 7-8lbs each. We did not feed them as heavily as recommended. We fried 2 right after processing and they were delicious. They had a lot more meat than a store bought chicken. The white meat had more texture and was much tastier. The dark meat was darker and had a lot more flavor than the store bought.

These chickens are much messier than layers. They are pooping machines. They are supposed to be fed .5-.8 lbs per day. If you feed at that rate they will be the size of a store bought broiler by 7 weeks. If you go to 10 weeks they will look like a small turkey. If you get some be sure to follow the instructions. They gain weight so fast that their legs and hearts can't keep up. So they have heart attacks and broken legs. We had decided that we weren't going to do any more but after we saw how nice they turned out and tasted them we have decided to do another batch.

 

[punkin]

Thanks for all your replies. Again, ya'll have educated me.

We are still deciding if we want to go this route. We will have to build a place to keep them. I thought a tractor would be best (cheapest) and would be something we would use in the future. Plus, no messy coop to clean.

 

[Farmfresh]

The Cornish hens like you buy in the store are Cornish X Rocks that are processed when they reach 1.5 to 2 pounds live weight. This usually takes them about 21 to 28 DAYS!


These same birds will reach broiler (fryer) size in about 42 days and if you let them go till they are mature 63 plus days they will weigh in at about 10 pounds!

We raised one that was over 10 pounds AFTER he was cleaned and dressed!

The Cornish X Rocks we buy are always from Welps Hatchery. They have the best ones we have EVER found. These are the "Frankenbirds" you hear tell of on this site. All they do is eat, drink and sleep! I just make sure they eat and drink the best and get fresh air and sunshine. They grow great and taste just yummy! Even butchered at 1 1/2 pounds they have LOTS of meat.

Good luck with your new adventure.

edited to add:

Oh buy the way a tractor would work the best, but be sure it has plenty of protection from the elements. These birds put everything into growing and usually grow feathers very slow. They are big, fat, LAZY and bald!

 

[k0xxx]

They are big, fat, LAZY and bald!

My wife came in as I was getting to the end of your message, and asked if you were describing me. I said, "NO, I'm not bald!"