Heritage Chicken vs. Cornish Cross: What's the Difference?
This isn't an attack on the commercial poultry industry. The interesting part is that the Cornish Cross was actually a remarkable breeding achievement - but it was bred for a very specific production system, and that creates limitations when you take it out of the system.
Before the modern day BROILER
For much of American history, chickens were not raised primarily as meat animals. A farm flock was made up of birds that needed to do several jobs. Hens laid eggs, roosters reproduced the flock and some birds eventually became dinner.
The chickens themselves were capable of reproducing naturally, foraging, walking, breeding, and living for considerably longer than today's commercial broiler.
In the first half of the 20th century, as Americans began eating more chicken, poultry breeders started looking for something very specific. A chicken that could turn feed into meat as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The Chicken of Tomorrow Competition
In the late 1940s, A & P Grocery Chain, sponsored a competition challenging breeders to develop a chicken that could produce more meat economically. Two breeding programs emerged and became the foundation of the modern commercial broiler industry.
The Cornish Cross was not simply a Cornish crossed with a Plymouth Rock - it was the result of decades of selective breeding and carefully managed genetic lines designed specifically for rapid growth and meat production. Those lines are then crossed in carefully controlled combinations to produce the commercial broiler that arrives at the farm as a day-old broiler chick. You can't simply buy a few Cornish Cross chickens, breed them and hatch their eggs expecting to produce another identical generation of Cornish Cross chickens.
The Practical Problem
Commercial broilers have been selected primarily for meat production, not for becoming long-lived breeding animals. The same body characteristics that make them excellent at producing meat can make reproduction more difficult.
The Cornish Cross is designed to be the end of the breeding program - not the beginning of another one.
The Problem with Raising Cornish Cross Chickens
Cornish Cross chickens have been selected for tremendous breast-muscle development because breast meat is one of the most valuable portions of the bird. But the chicken's skeleton, heart, lungs, legs, and other organs have not simply been enlarged in perfect proportion to the amount of muscle.
Commercial broilers are generally much less active than traditional breeds and are better suited for indoor, sedentary production since their rapid growth places stress on the legs and heart. The bird puts on an enormous amount of body weight in a short period of time. As body weight increases. the legs and joints have to support that weight. As they continue to spend more and more time resting on their breastbone they can also develop breast blisters.
A traditional chicken spends its day walking around and looking for bugs. A Cornish Cross is more likely to spend its day laying by the feeder unwilling or unable to stand, especially as it gets older. The rapid growth also places demands on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Conditions such as ascites, accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity due to heart failure, are common and sudden death can also occur. Experienced growers must pay close attention to heat, ventilation, feed management, activity and not keeping the birds beyond eight weeks.
The entire system - from genetics to feed to housing to processing - is built around getting a large amount of meat from a chicken in a short period of time. The Cornish Cross helped transform chicken from an occasional meal into one of the most affordable and widely available sources of animal protein in the country.
There is More Than One Way To Raise A Chicken
We raise birds that retain more of the characteristics that made chickens useful on farms for generations: they can walk, forage, breed, live outside and grow at a pace that allows their bodies to develop along with their muscle. More importantly, they aren't simply a final product in a breeding system. They are part of a flock.
Is there any benefit to Heritage Breed Meat Over the Cornish Cross?
In 2013, Ms. Alexandra R Christiansen completed a comparison study of heritage bred chicken meat vs commercial broiler meat, as part of her Master of Science degree in Food Science. In her scientific study, "Nutritional, Sensory, and Quality Attributes of Heritage Bred Chicken and Commercial Broiler Meat," Christiansen made some observations.
The heritage bred chickens were over 116 days of age while the Cornish Cross birds were approximately 42 days of age. Without skin, moisture and fat content were similar between both categories. With or without skin, Heritage meat had significantly greater amounts of omega-3 polyunsaturated fats (anti-inflammatory). Breast and thigh meat (with skin) of Heritage birds contained 35.60 and 35.21% of health polyunsaturated fatty acids as compared with commercial breast and thigh meat (with skin) of 20.96 and 20.45% respectively.
The study found that the ratio of omega-6 (inflammatory) to omega-3 (anti-inflammatory) fatty acids was more significantly more favorable in the heritage-bred chickens than in the commercial chickens. The ratio between omega-6s and omega-3s was more favorable in heritage bred chickens than in commercial chickens.
The commercial Cornish Cross had less connective tissue which results in a more tender breast while the Heritage bred thighs produced a 21% more yield than commercial thighs.
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