The Cornish Cross chicks are growing at such an amazing rate that the surprise chick looks like a songbird when it perches above the fray. We had a second fatality. That was disappointing, but not too bad. We still have all 50 chicks that we ordered, plus the surprise chick.
As soon as the weather warms enough to permit it, we will move the hens to the outdoor pen and move the chicks off the brooder table to the coop floor. The daytime temperatures are fine for the hens, but there is still some frost in the morning, here and there.
This is our first experience raising Cornish Cross chicks and we are learning just how different they are from normal chickens. They don’t scratch in the bedding! I learned a valuable lesson about putting down a thick layer of bedding for them. Normal chickens would scratch in it and turn it over, covering the poop and keeping their living space cleaner. Not these chicks. They just walk to the feeder, walk to the waterer, poop, sit in the poop, then repeat the process. Now, I just add a sprinkling of sawdust over the surface each time I feed them.
Their feather cover looks terrible. No matter how often I add clean bedding, they still look dirty and the feathers they do have are sparse and patchy. I knew that they are bred to avoid putting energy into feather cover, but seeing them up close illustrates just how good a job the breeders have done.
In these pictures, I tried to keep the camera placement the same to allow for better comparison between the sizes of the chicks. There is still no good indication of the breed or sex of the surprise chick.
If the Cornish Cross chicks were being sold for their looks, I’d buy up a bigger bunch of the surprise chicks!
Cornish Cross birds are bred to be the optimum meat producing breed, but they have significant shortcomings by other measures.