Same old question, new thread. Sustainable Alternative to Cornish Cross?

[Hip Hillbilly Acres]

Same old answer; not really.

Your best meat bird is pretty much always going to be a crossbred. I've had good results with a fast-maturing White Leghorn or California White rooster over "dual purpose" hens, but you lose that fast growth and breastiness in the next generation - F2s are always, always inconsistent. It's a simple fact of crossbreeding. The cross I mentioned is worth the trouble of butchering them out between 12 and 16 weeks in that you'll get something besides thighs. I flat refuse to raise a meat bird for longer than that, and I honestly resent having to feed them as long as 16 weeks - that's a LOT of feed!!

And, everyone who bothers to do the math learns that it is way, WAY cheaper to buy CX chicks when you want them rather than maintain a breeding flock all year - and especially a breeding flock of large, heavy birds who eat a lot and tend not to lay well - for the relatively few chicks you are going to raise. The big producers manage it by the magic of "economics of scale" and a constant rotation of their breeders into pot pie.

And speaking of math and going back to the feed thing I mentioned - and my time, raising and butchering. And meat-to bone ratio. And waste per bird. And heat for the brooder (CX chicks come off heat MUCH faster). And having my meat coop space taken up for twice as long - it just doesn't add up.
Listen, it takes me as much time to butcher some scrawny thing as it does a fat roaster. The less efficient birds have a higher percentage of feathers, bone and innards to dispose of than the meaties, and I have to butcher more of them to get the same amount of meat, so I end up with as much as 3x the mess to dispose of. CX I can start to butcher at 6 weeks, or take them to 8 for big birds, so my meat bird space has, tops, an 8 week turnover time. Less efficient birds will be filling that coop for twice as long, so even if I can fit half again as many of them in the space (say, the coop holds 10 CX, but 15 NotCX) over a 16 week period I can raise 20 6# CX versus 15 3.5# NotCX. That's 120# vs 52.5# for the same amount of time, coop space, cleaning, bedding, butchering. The CX will eat an average of 1.25 lbs a week, each, and the NotCX will only eat 1, but the CX are gone in 8 and the NotCX are on my feed bill for 16, so that's 10lbs to raise a CX and 16lbs to raise a smaller bird.
It just doesn't add up.
And then to add maintaining a breeding flock on top of that? And you can't even say "Well, they'd also be my laying flock" because they will lay less eggs for more food and of course you're not getting any egg you want to hatch a chick from. And if you want them to raise their own chicks, it's even worse because then that hen isn't laying anything for at least 6 weeks, plus the 2 weeks worth of eggs you want her sitting on, so that's 8 weeks of eggs lost per batch of chicks.

I don't know about you, but there's other stuff I'd rather waste time and money on.

But wait, tell us how you really feel. This is giving me some serious food for thought. Thanks so much for writing this.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

But wait, tell us how you really feel. This is giving me some serious food for thought. Thanks so much for writing this.

Honestly, there's a reason that the crown for best meat bird is a fight between strains of Cx, and that most "dual purpose" lines have become primary egg layers, and that reason is math. Cx get a lot of things very right, at the expense of virtually everything else - and then are produced at such scale they enjoy economies even over other mass hatchery-produced common breeds.