Cornish cross and buff orpington chicks at 10 days

Here's a picture of a buff orpington chick and a bantam. Notice the graphic on the box for relative height.

Here's a cornish cross next to the same bantam and box graphic
10 days later, here's a picture of a buff orpington chick and a cornish cross chick. Click on the picture for a bigger version. Notice the foot size on the cornish.

Both chicks are fed the same chick starter/grower, and both are kept in the same conditions. The cornish cross weighs 4x what the buff orpington does at this age.

We raise both cornish cross and heritage breeds. As far as eating, I prefer the heritage breeds, but some of our customers want the cornish, so we raise a few batches of them over the course of the year. They do pretty well to supply the demand while the heritage are growing out. This particular chick will be processed in 40 days, at about 6lbs live weight.

In a mixed brooder, you can tell which chickens are the cornish from the first day. They're the chicks that fall asleep with their head stuck in the feeder. The leghorns are the ones that run screaming from you when you feed them. The buff orpington chicks are calmer.