Freedom Rangers....week 9 stats UPDATE for wk 11

[arthurpete]

Just passed the 9 week mark and i decided to do a little weighing to see where the birds are. I have an even distribution of males and females (+1 female).

The avg male was 6.4 lbs with the high being 7lbs and low 5.8. The females avg 5 lbs with the heaviest being 5.6 lbs and lightest at 4.6.

The males are all over the scale while most of the females seem to be more consistent.

I started them on a bag of medicated feed (50 lbs) and have been feeding them the 'countryside organic' broiler @ 19% ever since. Right at week 9 they finished up the last bag of 19% which brought them to a cumulative of 450 lbs of feed so far. The have access to a 30 x 30 fenced area of grass and bugs for most of the daylight hours. Other than that they get the occasional garden extras and some boss.

I ran the math on it assuming average weight of all birds is 5.7, it would equate to a current conversion ratio of 3.1. I heard the ratio is normally around 2.6. I live in southern AL and we have had some unseasonably cool stretches so maybe that is why the ratio is a bit higher, thats my guess????

So assuming they dress out at say 69% i will be looking at roughly $3.69/lb birds. Im not attempting market the birds so im not too worried about the final price but i was at least curious. Obviously the longer i hang on to the birds the price/lb will go up so I intend to whack some of the larger males and females here soon. In doing this i am assuming that the smaller ones may have a chance to bulk up a bit more. According to the website they are suppose to reach 5lbs in a minimum of 9 weeks and max at 11

How much more weight can i reasonably expect them to put on past this point? Also, i am considering keeping a few of the smaller pullets to introduce to my other eggers. Anybody had much luck with Rangers and egg laying? How do they fair?

 

[Bucky182]

I am guessing 25 birds with the amount of feed you have fed. They will put some more on but the question is at what cost? They are at the point of diminishing returns. I would say get them in the freezer and start deer hunting or crappie fishing!

 

[Tracydr]

Can you butcher large ones and not the small ones? Then, leave the small ones with lights for about 16 hour days to each day so that they can gain more quickly.
Adding extra feeders seemed to help mine start gaining faster and the lights really helped a lot. It also helped when I started adding some soaked alfalfa cubes. They eat the more nutritious alfalfa instead of grass.

 

[arthurpete]

So i processed the remaining FR's i had and found some surprising results. The Males on average weighed 8.56 lb (9.4 high and 7.4 low) and the Females averaged 6.8 lbs (7.8 high and 6.0 low).

I processed only Males the first go around at 9 weeks and they averaged 6.7 lbs. So even 2 additional weeks allowed for them to get significantly bigger, almost 2lbs!

Unfortunately, some of the weight was just added fat. I noticed a considerable amount of fat around the vent compared to the wk 9 birds. They also went through another 150 lbs of feed which definetely bumped up the conversion ratio even though on average they all weighed 1.7 lbs heavier. The ratio went from 3.1 to 3.6.....

The breasts on these birds are a little on the thin side but they make up for it in bulkier thighs and legs, which is what i prefer anyways.

I also had my first FR on the table a few days ago and it was superb. Overall, i am pretty happy with the results.

 

[PurpleChicken]

Good thread.

I had similar results with raising Freedom Rangers. I love those birds. The females were more consistent and stayed in a tighter weight range. The males varied more but were much larger.

The extra fat you mentioned is a function of their age and is desirable to most people. It makes for a tastier and better stock bird. Some people will feed broilers a higher blend of scratch for the last week to pack on that fat.

Nice job.