I raised 26 freedom rangers last year as meat birds, but kept 5 females to try out as laying hens. They started laying eggs early, at only about 16 weeks and got going pretty well. We had a lot of double yolks eggs too, but then things started to go badly. One of them started laying mostly softshells eggs and another laid very thin shells eggs. I tried supplementing with crushed oyster shell free choice, mixed in with the food and fed their egg shells back to them. Nothing helped. Within about 6-9 mon both of those birds died (not at the same time) and the necropsy I did one one of them showed that she had a blocked oviduct and a massive amount of egg yolk inside her. The other three birds kept doing well but two of them just kept getting fatter and fatter (even though I did not give them free choice feed). Both of those birds died at about one year old. A necropsy on one of them showed an absolutely ridiculous amount of body fat that appeared to just put too much pressure on her internal organs. There was a soft egg shell and fluid built up in her body cavity. The only one that is still living was the sole white chicken - she obviously had a different genetic make up than the others, has not gotten fat and was the best layer out of any of them. She is taking a break from laying this winter but hopefully she'll start back up in the spring. I hope the rest of you have better luck with lifespan than I did. These are easy birds and were pretty good layers. And as meat birds, they are phenomenal.