Indio Gigante crossed to Bresse?

[ShellBelly Hutch]

Has anybody tried this, does anybody have an idea of the outcome, and yes I'm going for a super meat bird that I can replicate, unlike cornish cross. Would you go with a bresse roo to ur gigante hens, the other way around, both, and why? Also considering the broody nature of the gigante, wondering about them hatching out their own eggs. I'd be running two purebred flocks, then a pen or two pens of mixed breeding, once a year, to hatch out my meat crosses. So advice on the logistics is welcome too!

 

[FunClucks]

You're proposing crossing two vasty different body structures. Indio Gigante are all leg, sleek, and take a while to mature. Breese are much more square, squat, broad breasted, and ready to process much sooner. They have different growth rates and put on muscles at different rates and in different locations. What structure and processing timeline is your goal? Why did you decide against raising Breese? Sounds like they'd be a good fit for your stated goals.

 

[ShellBelly Hutch]

It's mostly that I want to replicate cornish cross and I know I can just go find Plymouth rocks and cornish game hens and cross them but where's the fun in that and beyond that I'd have two pure bred strains of chickens so I want cool breeds that I find interesting. And I like leg meat more than white meat, but I was hoping to get both in a hybrid that grew faster than the gigante, but big still, and they'd be my butcher birds so... idk it seemed like a potential win win win. Other breeds I considered were Brahma, and cornish game fowl and black giants BUT one thing the gigante have in common with the cornish is the feathering which ends up coming through as less feathering in the cornish cross. Ehhhh???

 

[FunClucks]

Like most things chicken, you may just have to try it and see how it works out for you.

White plymouth rock to Breese is also something to consider. There are a few threads on here of folks raising straight Breese for meat, and they can really bulk up over the generations if you select your breeding stock correctly and cull appropriately.

The commercial CX come from 4 parent flocks, and they use dwarfism in one or more of the flocks to keep birds that will be able to reproduce. The terminal cross chicks that are sold commercially can't - by the time they're old enough, they're too big. Sometimes folks can keep a CX hen and cross her with something and get a few eggs to improve their meat flock, but the CX hens usually die before they're 2 yrs old regardless of how well you keep them.

I tried the White Rangers from Freedom Ranger hatchery, which are very, very similar to CX but with better livability, and was very happy with their ability to give meat and eggs in their first year. I'm into my second year with my remaining hen, and she has not successfully laid yet this year - she's giving me soft shell eggs, but I don't know if she did that last year also. I tried to keep back both my hens, but one died. She may have been the one that was laying.

 

[ShellBelly Hutch]

Yeah I bet I change my mind 5 more times before I get to actually start this project t but the end goal is a meat cross with the hybrid vigor, while retaining the benefit of the parent breeds as purebred.