Who's Afraid of FrankenChickens?

Well, we're just about halfway to putting 25 or so Cornish Cross chickens in the freezer. To date, most every time I do an internet search about anything Cornish Cross related I get nothing but bad press. They die mysteriously, they grow faster than their bodies can handle, the list goes on and on.

We've lost 3 to snakes. (How do I know they were snakes? It's pretty obvious that Mr. Snake got the fat chicken about a quarter of the way down and realized that though he'd been able to constrict said chickens, his eyes were bigger than his stomach and had to cede defeat.) In unison with the case of the partially eaten chickens, I noticed a lot of our eggs disappearing. After some research I ordered some faux eggs from Amazon. As the wooden eggs disappeared, the chickens stopped dying. Eventually I'm sure we'll find a couple of snake skins with several wooden eggs in them... :-)

The remainder of the Cornish have grown at the advertised phenomenal rate. They run around, though not nearly as much as the Ideal 236s. I do find it really strange how content they are to sit and eat, I've never seen another chicken do this. They've handled the Texas heat and an unseasonably humid summer like champs.

In the future when we raise more I think having them in a Salatin like trailer will do a lot to help them to further express their chickenhood. I wouldn't raise them with traditional chickens again. The smaller, more active chickens this week started to pick at the Cornish, causing us to separate them into two pens.

Hopefully I'll get a couple of guys at work hooked on knowing the name of the chicken they're eating.