If the meat chickens are Cornish Crosses, they don't have lots of feathers. Their legs have to be strong to carry all the weight they put on for the 6-8 weeks they are alive before slaughter. Cornish X's ALWAYS act like they are starving. They have been bred to be eating machines so they will put on plenty of weight by the time they are 8 weeks old. They are bred to have few feathers because it is easier to clean them commercially.

Yes, it is sad, but true. If you plan to raise chickens for meat and you don't choose the Cornish X's, you are going to be raising some very expensive meat and you might not like the taste.

If you are waiting for them to get fully feathered, you will wait a long time --- if they are more than 8 weeks old, they will probably die of heart attacks because their sweet little hearts are not going to be able to handle the weight.

That's life.

carmen is right. They sound like textbook Cornish X. They need to have their feed rationed, you cannot leave the feed in front of them all the time.

If they were on their way to the slaughterhouse, they must be old enough to process--if you keep them alive much longer, their bodies will get too heavy for their legs to support and they will either go down on their hocks, or their legs will break. Because of this, it's cruel to keep Cornish Cross birds alive past their slaughter age.

The messy condition, poor feathering and jammed-together-like-sardines thing is VERY typical of Cornish X birds, that's how they are raised, and have been specifically bred by humans to be this way--lots of meat in the shortest amount of time. They ARE very sweet and docile birds. More info and pictures of the breed here:

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Broil/BRKMeat.html

Best thing to do for them is to continue their trip to the slaughterhouse.

Thank your fellow humans for creating these monsters. :(

Velvet ~:>

They also could be spent layers on their way to the soup can. Inbred they probably were not. Layers and heavy meat birds are actually an outcross of 2 to 4 different inbred lines which are superior at their task(more eggs or more meat) partially due to outcrossing). Spent layers can sometimes be a fair egg maker for a family but as mentioned by another poster, the heavy meat birds can only be kept with feed restriction, they just arent designed for a normal chicken life.

This is why I'm a vegetarian...I cannot stand the treatment and mishandling of all of the "meat" animals in factory farms..it deeply saddens me. I have no problem with real farms obviously because that's the way it should be and should have stayed...but I don't eat meat at all because of the huge discusting factory farms that don't realize that these animals are living creatures.

I've heard that it is 'cruel' to let cornish X's live beyond when they are supposed to be slaughtered, because they get a lot of leg problems and other issues due to their voracious appetites and stuff. :( I'd never grow them, sure they grow like crazy but I'm sure they aren't as nutritious.

Sort of gives you an idea why huge industrialized farming isn't a good thing, as well as breeding monster eating machines. :(

I never knew about cornish Xs before. These are not spent layers, they are not very old, they don't seem to be fully grown. The deformities and oddly shaped bodies are very sad to see. My neighbor bought them to be egg layers and thinks they'll be fine. He has much more experience than us with chickens therefore my DH thinks that he is right. He and his wife have been raising chickens for years. I look at these Cornish Xs and get sad. I'm thinking of culling they ones that are the most deformed and keeping the healthier looking hens. They can live with my mixed breed, very pretty white rooster and probably breed much healthier babies. My younger baby chicks of various breeds seem so much healthier and adorable. I really only wanted about 12 hens, not 40. DH doesn't tend to do things in moderation.

Ellen

Re: Cornish x's not doing well beyond 8 weeks or so... My dad raises chickens and delved into the Cornish X for a brief time; he had the same result-- if they weren't butchered close to 8 weeks, they died of heart attacks or had trouble standing not long after that. He ended up giving two of them to a friend of his, who left the chickens out of their coops every day to "free-range" over his multiple-acre property.

Well maybe it was the increased availability of exercise, but the Cornish X's my dad gave to him did NOT die-- in fact, they became like little (big?) dinosaur-bodybuilders roaming around this guy's property; they were freakishly gigantic, and quite healthy. Not sure exactly how long they lived but I know for sure it was at least a year or two.

The cornish X's we raised were allowed to free-range and they certainly did for the first three weeks of their lives. Once they got so heavy they just didn't venture far any more. We only fed them from morning till dusk and then took the food away. We even put their food far from the hoop house each morning so they would have to travel a bit for the feed.

Sad, sad, sad. We will never raise them again. It was very pitiful. If they aren't processed at 6-8 weeks, you are being cruel to them. They find it hard to walk after 8 weeks. Hate to tell you people, these we raised were raised on organic grain and pasture. They are the same breed raised commercially and sold to grocery stores and KFC.

It is called American chicken.