The 4H club is an organization designed to develop leadership in young people with a strong focus on agriculture. They offer summer camps and many fine youth programs throughout the country. The 4H club in Pomfret, Connecticut, holds an annual auction to raise funds for the camp. We have attended every year for at least a decade since my son went to summer camp there and had a wonderful time.
This year, my wife went while I stayed home to work. She ended up buying 50 Cornish X (also called Cornish Cross) broiler chicks. She paid $22.50 for the entire lot of 50 chicks. That's about 47 cents each. These same chicks will cost you about $1.87 plus postage from a commercial poultry breeder and are often sold for between $5-6 each locally. They are a special proprietary breed and are only available through breeders licensed by the breed owner.
The particular trait that makes this breed of chickens desirable is that they grow amazingly fast. Cornish X chickens are ready to be butchered in 6-8 weeks after hatching. At that point, you'll expect a 4-5 pound dressed weight. That makes them much more economical than ordinary breeds which might take 5 months to reach their finished size.
The downside to the Cornish X breed is that they grow so quickly by a combination of genetics, eating continuously and not moving around enough to burn calories. Others who have raised them said that if you don't put their drinking water a few dozen yards away from their food, they'll never get up and walk. They are reported to simply sit in front of the feeder trough, eat and sleep. If the ground is bare dirt, as feeder areas often are, that means they sit in the dirt and mud, and even their own poop for days at a time. Now this only happens when they are older and nearing their harvest weight and their are ways around it.
As chicks, Cornish X birds behave much like any other. A little less active, a little more voracious at the feeder, but pretty much ordinary. As they grow and put on weight, they become less and less active. By moving the feeders, separating water from food, and making them move around in order to get what they want, you can keep them somewhat active. I'll report back with my own experience with this breed once we get them and start them growing.
At any rate, the other downside of Cornish X chickens is that the excess weight and fat is a heavy load on their hearts. If allowed to continue growing to full adulthood, they tend to die, presumably of heart attacks. This, say other Cornish Cross owners, starts to become a significant risk at around 12 weeks old. Furthermore, the Cornish Cross breed is a hybrid. Reportedly, it is derived from mixing four separate breeds of parent stock. I don't know the exact combination. That means that Cornish X don't breed true. If you were to get some that survived long enough and were able to breed them, the resulting chicks would be a hodge-podge of all possible variations of the four parent breeds, but not fast-growing Cornish X chickens.
Cornish X, therefore, are suited to one purpose: being raised for meat. They may be the most efficient feed to body weight converters in the world of agriculture, outperforming tilapia, pigs, cows, and just about everything else. People who are not prepared to butcher them, should not have Cornish X chickens.
This will be our first direct experience with raising this breed although we have raised other breeds of chickens and have seen Cornish X's at other local farms. We'll keep them separated from our older (egg-laying) flock, for their own protection. Adult chickens don't take well to the introduction of new chicks unless there's a fierce mother hen to defend them, or a gradual secure introduction can be made over time.
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