New to meat birds, a couple questions.
 

I haven't ever raised meat chickens before, and I would love to raise about 15 - 20 this spring/summer.

I have been reading on here for the past week and I am leaning towards getting Cornish X's. Is there anything specific I need to know about them besides the fact that they are going to stink to high heaven? Will they be able to get around well enough to walk up and down a ramp to get in and out of a chicken coop? How big should I make their outside run?

Can the Cornish X's be housed with an egg laying variety of chicken?

Where is a good place to order chicks from? I was looking at Meyer Hatchery.

Thanks for any help! Getting excited about raising our own chickens!

To keep your crosses from stinking either use deep bedding or use a tractor portable pen to spread the manure around. There is no need for them to stink to high heaven. If you allow this to happen you are opening your birds up to breathing problems.

I use a twelve hour cycle of feed on and off. This works for me to keep the leg problems to nill. I also start my egg layers with them they will keep the crosses moving around. Excerise helps with the weakness issues.

They will be able to walk around up and down ramps or waddle around toward the end of their life. If you must keep them in a stationary run minimum of two square feet.

I have ordered from Meyers, hoovers and schelchts for broilers. They all did good. Shipping is going to be interesting and costly. USPS wanted to add a $9.00-11.00 as a surcharge for shipping live birds. I don't know if they got it approved or not.

Once you taste your home grown birds you won't want to touch another supermarket bird. Have fun and enjoy some good meat.

I read here somewhere that people thought the Freedom Rangers tasted better (my neighbor had like 500 pastured meat birds last year, and he chose Freedom Rangers, he did a meat share operation)...

Most honestly, there is no difference in taste. I'm speaking for a long time farmer who has raised his own meat birds. BTW, he recently decided it wasn't worth it.
I raised them last spring, and fed them well. Ingredients I wanted to pass into their meat, for me. I find nothing wrong with raising your own meat birds for better health purposes. Along with that, as for myself (just me) I became disgusted with cleaning their abundance in poop. Be prepared to go through ALOT of feed too! As far as them moving around, going up your ramp..I would say, not for long. I literally had to carry each bird outside the coop, then , back in. They also become filthy from laying around. So, that turned me off. All that being said..I really think, if you can plan out a good enviorment, and don't mind cleaning up, and most definitely, the processing, then I would give it try. IMO, it is not ecomonical. Healthier, if you feed all organic and keep everything sanitary. Just want to add....I never eat anything I raise...but I could not wait to put these guy's down. Also, one got too big at 6 weeks..he dropped. So...it's alot of stuff to consider.

We did our first 25 meat birds this year. We fed them on the 12 hour rotating schedule as well, if we didn't they'd just plop next to the feeder and eat and poop. We processed at about 7 weeks. Ours were able to get up the ramp to walk around until the day we processed. We also started 6 comet chicks in with them to start with no problems. We raised the feed and water up off the ground so they had to stand up to eat/drink, that helped make sure they were on their feet and moving around. They do poop and yes, we changed out straw, but deep bedding would have been fine too. We would do it again. They're not lovely or fun like our layers or ducks, but they sure are tasty!

It's less the breed and more the age at slaughter.

Freedom Rangers are slower growing than CX which means they are older at slaughter and have had more time to develop flavor.

CX can taste about the same as FRs if you slow them down a bit by limiting their feed and forcing a little exercise by letting them scratch around in the grass.

Any chicken tastes better when raised in more natural conditions than what the factory farms do.

I'm really lucky to be able to free range my birds. We did 14 cornish crosses, and 15 Red Rangers, in two different batches. Half of each batch got parted out and half were whole birds into the freezer. I let the cornish go a little longer than 6 weeks. More like 10. I fed them less so they wouldn't grow too fast and keel over. Mine were very active. I started layer pullets with each batch. Both the rangers and the cornish free ranged and foraged all over the property with the older layer hens. I started both sets of meat birds in my garage with a 12 hours with feed, and 12 without. I just fed in the morning around 7:30 and saw how much food they were eating till 7:30 at night and pulled their food. Once they moved outside I fed twice a day. The cornish made for better parted chickens and the the rangers better whole birds. The rangers had much larger legs compared to breast meat. The cornish bigger breasts to legs. I think this coming spring I'll do two sets of cornish birds and skip the rangers. They were big fat birds. None of mine walked up the ramp to roost in the top of the chicken condo, they all slept in the bottom where the egg boxes were and made a big mess where the other birds wanted to lay. Next year I'll have a dedicated meat bird roost box. Some mornings I had all those fat, white, creepy meats waiting by the front door for me in the mornings. I'm sure they would have come right in the house looking for food if I let them. They did really good foraging and hunting for their own food to supplement what I fed them. If you want to, click the link in my signature. It's to my blog. You can scroll down and on the right hand side is labels. Click on creepy meats, chickens, red rangers, and chicks and you can read all about raising the birds from a few day old chicks to processing them for the freezer. I took lots of pictures and documented the whole way.

Wow-- You guys are pique-ing my interest.... Meat birds sound pretty different from a layer or more "natural" sort of dual purpose bird..... interesting, but not sure I want any.....

This is encouraging... we have a lot of room, and hopefully we can keep them up on their feet and actively looking for food. I will get some chickens for laying to raise with them. I will also check out your blog. Thanks!!

We have raised thousands of various chickens on our farm over the years. We choose cornish cross for meat, because they grow well, and are EFFICIENT at converting feed to meat.

Stink? Any chicken poo stinks. If they are outside, in at least a semi free range environment, the stink is not an issue IMO. I have read how people supposedly have heart attack issues and leg issues. This I do not understand, as the birds we have, we don't have these issues at all. We shoot for an 8 to 10 lb dressed bird, and even at these weights, yes they walk up the ramp, heck, more like jump!

One thing we have found, is that if we ouse the cornish with our egg layers, the layer birds start picking at the meat birds. The agility of the egg layers allows them to learn to pick at the less agile cornish crosses, and we were actually losing birds to this disgusting habit, so we split them up after that experiment. Something to consider.


We have great luck with these heavy beasts! They are very tasty, and are excellent foragers in a semi free range confinement situation.

I raise the Cornish X's, about 500 a year. I describe them as the "couch potatoe" chicken. Lazy, sit around, do nothing but eat and poop. BUT they taste fabulous! I start them in the barn until they feather out and then move them around pasture in chicken tractors. I have them processed at 8 weeks.
Meyers Hatchery is one of the places I get my bird. Good service and healthy chicks. I also purchase from Ridgeway....

This is exactly what I'm running into now. I am finding shipping charges to be really high... I'm not looking for a lot of birds and can't really justify the cost of shipping. I am going to start searching for birds locally I guess.
I am in mid-Michigan, if anyone knows a place relatively close I would appreciate it. I found a hatchery in Birch Run, MI - which is very close to me, but they seem to specialize in Ameraucana's. (www.fowlstuff.com)
We have a TSC close to us too - but I'm not sure they get Cornish X's in - but might be a good place to find some laying hens. I was hoping for Buff Orpingtons or Blue Cochins for layers. The Blue Cochins seem to go fast. Both are cold hardy, so that's good. I've been looking at craigslist too, but might have better luck closer to Spring.
As far as the Cornish X's smell - I was only getting that from all the research I've done on here. Several people said that they stink worse than other chickens. I've been looking at tractor plans and videos also.
Thank you for all the insight and help so far!

I put mine in an old camper and they had good size run. I rationed their feed to one feeding a day along with garden scraps and anything they found scratching in the dirt and grass. We had a death in the family at butcher time so that got delayed until they were 12 and 13 weeks... they did great, not one fatality. My MIL said they looked like little turkeys. I had them mixed with other chicken breeds and had no problems... but they do eat A LOT more than the others. I ordered from McMurray.

I know someone else who raised them too last summer and they gave free choice feed all day and theirs got to the point they couldn't walk and suffered from health problems. She told me they had to "put them on a diet". So I HIGHLY recommend feed ration more than anything. They also ordered from McMurray.

Look for a local feed store or ask your TSC if they can order them for you. My local Valley Country Store will order any chicken I want, no minimum order, and no shipping.

Yes, they smell. I just finished off 50. They were cleaned most every day and towards the end, they smelled. They eat a lot and poop more. Around the waterers was the worst and I put lots of bedding down. I hate raising them inside. Nevertheless, they are good eating. I have been raising birds from a commercial hatchery ( patented birds) and have decided to go back to Cornish x. I think I had fewer problems. Getting them outside helps in a multitude of ways as has already been mentioned. TSC sells them in the spring. I used to raise the egg and meat birds together and they were ok. Do be aware of the picking issue as mentioned. Blood on a white bird, even a speck, and the egg layers will be ruthless. The other meat birds, not so much.
Have you ever butchered before? Doing a small group like you mentioned and early is good thinking. If things go well, you can do more.

We didn't have problems with them being smelly, just with the high volume of poop. And it was a seriously high volume . . . it was worst when they were still in the brooder, and not as much of a problem once we moved them outside into a chicken tractor. If you can move them onto new ground once a day it's much better.

If you have Tractor Supply or other feed store near you, I'd ask about ordering through them--it makes the shipping issue pretty much nil. Also, be careful about housing them with layers; the one problem we had with this was keeping the dang fat chickens (our term to distinguish the Xs from the others) out of the layer feed. They will eat EVERYTHING they can reach. If we try Xs again, I'm going to find a way to prevent them from getting into the layer feed so that I can more easily restrict their intake; we didn't have any heart attacks or limb breaks, but we did have problems with birds that would lumber halfway across the electronet-enclosed yard and have to stop to catch their breath before they could finish the trip. That plus the way that their breast feathers were totally ripped up from sitting down all the time made us not very happy with them. They did make impressive carcasses, though.

I have raised both. One thing to consider with the Rangers is that they reach sexual maturity before they reach "freezer camp" age. With the birds I had the poor hens took a horrible beating from all the roos. AND I had 12 roosters crowing at 4 AM. It was a loud and stressful time here for a few weeks. They tasted great, but I can't say any better than the Cornish, which are much easier to deal with.

Ours do not normally stink but we let them outside. They do forage quite a bit if you don't feed them 24/7. We have a 10x12 coop with a 50 x 50 or so yard and it keeps them fairly happy. The yard has 2 old apple trees in it and since we get our birds late they get all the fallen apples as well as any garden stuff we throw in there to supplement their feed and bug hunting.
We get ours from here http://sunnysidehatchery.com/default.aspx. They service Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, & Michigan as well.
Shipping appears to be 6 bucks for orders under 100 or 10 for orders under 10 birds.
We order ours from the feed mill so no shipping charges because they have several orders shipped.

I grew up with Momma and Daddy raising commercial broilers, they had 3 chicken houses. I personally went for taste over speed and got Sulmtaler chickens. Grew to 16 weeks 5 lbs skinned (dont like to pluck) best tasting chicken meat in the world.

We had our first batch of 50 Cornish X processed on Dec 12th. They also came from Sunnyside Hatchery and would order from them again.
If I raise them again, things are going to be different due to this first experience.
--I'll never raise them indoors again. They were by themselves in a big coop but would never go out. I would have had to carry them all out and probably back in.
--We also fed 12 hrs on 12 off. I would have hated to see how big they would have been if we hadn't restricted their food. As it was, the average carcass weight was 9 lbs!
Because they were without food all night I could barely get them to move away from the door to get in to feed them.
Even with restricted feeding, they eat a huge amt. of food. Also, make sure you have enough waterers. They drink a lot of water.

I didn't calculate the cost of this batch because I spent a lot more than I will raising the next batch in tractors. This time, besides feed, I bought bedding (you will need fresh bedding every day or they will be nasty beyond belief), extra waterers and we paid for processing. The only reason we didn't butcher them ourselves was because of the time of year and outdoor weather conditions.
I would only raise them in decent weather and will start to butcher them as they need to go. I had them butchered at 8 weeks but think they could have gone easily at 6-7 weeks.
One thing I've thought about regarding raising them in tractors or even in portable electric netting is the amount of pasture that will be eaten,tore up and pooped on (excessively) by the time the chickens are butchered. If they're in a tractor and moved everyday, there will be 50+ spots in your pasture that will take some time to recover. We have 35 acres so can pasture them but that is still a lot of ugly spots until they regrow.
One thing that makes raising this type of chicken easy (for me) is there is NO thought of doing anything else with them besides putting them in the freezer. It's almost like mercy killing when the time comes. Like I said earlier, eight weeks is almost a week or two too long.

We put up 30 "Jumbo Cornish X Rocks" every fall. There is so much meat in them I wind up with:

....45 meat pies
....30 packages of legs (roasts)
....5 packages of wings (with some breast attached)
....15 packages of backs/necks (for either soup, rice/chicken or fried, the latter being a favorite of mine)
....5 packages of livers
....The feet I use to make stock.
....The hearts, gizards & lungs go to the dogs.

I keep them until they are at least 2 months of age and keep food out for them ALL THE TIME, along with fresh water (one pan having electrolytes in it; other pan having "Broiler Booster" in it). It is these additives that keep the large bodies off the ground because it helps keep the legs strong.

Their "brooder" part has an old sheet over straw initially, then that removed and fresh straw placed in there every week until I can let them out into the pen. The pen has agricultural lime 3-4 inches deep which helps deter smell as well as insects; also helps keep the cornish clean. It is also easy to clean, though rarely necessary to do so.

Yes they go thru a lot of food; but the value of the large amount of meat we get outweighs the cost considerable. Yes, the area smells but no more than regular chickens. (This may be in part to the way we keep it, as stated above.)

I never place regular-sized chickens in the brooder with these. I always purchase from McMurray.