Cornish Cross Broiler Chicks — What's a Fair Price?
Prices from 4 hatcheries, updated September 4, 2026. In stock at 3 of 4 right now.
A Cornish Cross Broiler pullet chick typically sells for around $3.19 right now; straight run (unsexed) runs around $3.87. Prices below are each hatchery's current listing per sex.
Price by hatchery
| Hatchery | Pullet (female) | Straight run | Cockerel (male) | Unsexed / see listing | Next hatch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meyer Hatchery Ohio | $2.70 In stock | $2.97 In stock | $3.19 In stock | — | — | view → |
| Cackle Hatchery Missouri | — | — | — | $4.99 In stock | — | view → |
| Murray McMurray Hatchery Iowa | $5.00 In stock | $5.25 In stock | $5.50 In stock | — | Sep 7, 2026 | view → |
| Sunnyside Hatchery Wisconsin | $2.25 Call hatchery | $2.20 Call hatchery | $2.35 Call hatchery | — | — | view → |
Minimum order quantities and shipping differ by hatchery and can change which is cheapest to your door. "Call hatchery" means that hatchery publishes prices but not live availability.
Reading the availability signal
Cornish Cross Broiler is listed at 4 of the 6 hatcheries this index tracks — the others don't currently carry it under this breed name, and today it's in stock at 3 of those 4. When some hatcheries have sold out but others haven't, the remaining in-stock listings set the real price of getting chicks now — the medians above already exclude sold-out listings when in-stock ones exist, so they reflect what you can actually order today.
Before your chicks arrive
Disclosure: the Chewy links below are affiliate links — if you buy through them we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. This never affects the prices or hatchery rankings above. Details.
Day-old chicks need a heat source, chick-specific feed, and clean water ready before the shipping box arrives. Chewy — a pet-supplies retailer, not one of the hatcheries this index tracks — carries chick starter feed, brooder heat plates, and chick feeders and waterers.
Price history
A flat line here is normal, not a tracking gap: US hatcheries publish seasonal catalog prices and hold them, so genuine repricings are rare events (we measured — zero across our entire tracking window so far). The median moves only when the in-stock mix changes. What varies day to day is availability, shown above.
Common questions
Every answer below is computed from this page's own numbers at build time, and updates with the daily data refresh.
- How much do Cornish Cross Broiler chicks cost?
- As of September 4, 2026, the index tracks 14 Cornish Cross Broiler chick listings at 4 of the 6 US hatcheries it follows. Chick prices depend on sex, so each class is priced separately: pullets (sexed females) — median $3.19 across 3 listings ranging $2.70 to $5.00; straight run (unsexed) — median $3.87 across 4 listings ranging $2.97 to $5.25; cockerels (sexed males) — median $3.69 across 3 listings ranging $3.19 to $5.50; listings the hatchery publishes without a sex label — a single listing at $4.99. Prices are per chick and exclude shipping, and hatcheries set minimum order quantities. A further 3 tracked listings carry no published price at all, so they are counted above but left out of every price figure.
- Which hatchery has the cheapest Cornish Cross Broiler chicks?
- Meyer Hatchery has the lowest price for pullets (sexed females) at $2.70 per chick, as of September 4, 2026, compared across the 2 hatcheries with that class in stock. Minimum order quantities, vaccination options and shipping differ by hatchery and can change which one is cheapest to your door.
- Which hatcheries sell Cornish Cross Broiler chicks?
- 4 of the 6 US hatcheries the index tracks list Cornish Cross Broiler chicks as of September 4, 2026: Sunnyside Hatchery from $2.20 (straight run, availability not published), Meyer Hatchery from $2.70 (pullets), Cackle Hatchery from $4.99 (sex not stated) and Murray McMurray Hatchery from $5.00 (pullets). Each price is that hatchery's cheapest current Cornish Cross Broiler listing, whichever sex class it falls in, so the classes named can differ from hatchery to hatchery. Prices marked sold out or with unpublished availability sit outside the medians above, which are built from in-stock listings wherever the breed has any.
- Are Cornish Cross Broiler chicks in stock right now?
- 11 of the 14 Cornish Cross Broiler chick listings the index tracks were in stock as of September 4, 2026, at 3 of the 4 hatcheries carrying the breed. The earliest hatch date any tracked hatchery publishes for Cornish Cross Broiler is Sep 7, 2026. Availability is the figure that moves day to day on this site; price mostly isn't.
- Has the price of Cornish Cross Broiler chicks changed?
- The daily median for Cornish Cross Broiler chicks has moved 5 times across the 53 days the index has tracked them, starting July 14, 2026 — but that is the mix changing, not a hatchery changing a price: when a sold-out listing drops out of the in-stock pool or a different sex class restocks, the median moves on its own. Genuine repricings are rare here — the index has observed 1 across 54,809 day-over-day listing comparisons.
- Do pullet Cornish Cross Broiler chicks cost more than straight run?
- No — it runs the other way for Cornish Cross Broiler. Pullets (sexed females) have a median $3.19 against $3.87 for straight run, making the sexed females $0.68 per chick cheaper. That inversion is unusual and worth checking against the hatchery table above before ordering. Both medians come from the same 2 hatcheries. Cockerels (sexed males) sit at a median $3.69.
Cite this page: Chick Price Index, "Cornish Cross Broiler chick price," data through September 4, 2026. https://chickpriceindex.com/breeds/cornish_cross
Related reading
- The Cheapest Chicks: Production Hybrids and Broilers — Sex links, austra whites, and Cornish Cross broilers anchor the bottom of the price range. What the cheap end of the catalog actually buys you — and the trade-offs the price implies.
- The Pullet Premium, Measured: What Sexed Chicks Really Cost — Same breed, same hatchery, same hatch — and the female chick costs two-thirds more. We measured the pullet premium across every matched pair we track, and found the one bird where it flips.
- Do Baby Chick Prices Actually Move? We Measured. — More than 12,000 priced listing-day comparisons across six US hatcheries — and not one genuine repricing of a chick listing. What that means for when (and whether) to wait for a deal.
How this works: we collect every public Cornish Cross Broiler listing from tracked hatcheries daily and record price and availability by sex. Full methodology.