Anybody try "freedom rangers" or Rosambro breeds?

dfvellone

In the Brooder
11 Years
Dec 17, 2008
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I usually raise cornish roasters (from Murray Mcmurray) and am thinking of trying either freedom rangers from Freedom Ranger Hatchery, or Rosambro from MT-DI Poultry farm.

My desire is a slightly slower growing bird with a greater inclination to forage, though with a good feed conversion ratio.

Has anybody tried any of these breeds and can you offer any insight regarding a comparison to cornish roasters, or just your experience with their foraging capabilities?

Thanks.
 
Raised them last year I found them to have a suprerior breast than the FR and ready to butcher just a little sooner than the FR and MT-DI is also much less expensive. Also Nolls hatcher offers three different meat birds you might want to look at which I find better than the FR and much much lest expensive. Also the rosambro is white which makes them easier to dress and more attractive when done.
 
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Both the Freedom Ranger and the Rosambro come from stock developed for the French Label Rouge program, so probably have a lot of the same characteristics.
 
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Freedom Ranger lines as far as I know. We had 50, we've had 27 already with CHF at 5 weeks old, they are just all dropping like flies, we are seeing 3-4 die a day. They are doing horribly when we've got the fair CX started who are not thrilled with the heat, but not doing badly. Plus we just processed a bunch of CX roos who we had ONE flip on in hot weather at full size. We've got the hens left now and they are still bopping around, no problems at all.

Ugh, never again.
 
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Freedom Ranger lines as far as I know. We had 50, we've had 27 already with CHF at 5 weeks old, they are just all dropping like flies, we are seeing 3-4 die a day. They are doing horribly when we've got the fair CX started who are not thrilled with the heat, but not doing badly. Plus we just processed a bunch of CX roos who we had ONE flip on in hot weather at full size. We've got the hens left now and they are still bopping around, no problems at all.

Ugh, never again.

Algebra, I'm sorry to hear of that. Have you been losing Rosambro or Freedom Rangers? That seems like a really high rate of loss. Have you talked to the hatchery they came from?
 
I got my order of 25 4 days agoand they're doing well so far. Lost one runt a couple days in, but it didn't look like it would make it from the beginning.

They're active and energetic seeming, but already smell like a meat bird!
 
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Freedom Ranger lines as far as I know. We had 50, we've had 27 already with CHF at 5 weeks old, they are just all dropping like flies, we are seeing 3-4 die a day. They are doing horribly when we've got the fair CX started who are not thrilled with the heat, but not doing badly. Plus we just processed a bunch of CX roos who we had ONE flip on in hot weather at full size. We've got the hens left now and they are still bopping around, no problems at all.

Ugh, never again.

I'm curious too. We have redbros, but I suspect they are terminal cross products and not first line hybrids. The reason I think that is the huge variation in size, leg problems even though they recieve adequate vitamins (even extra for the ones with leg problems), a blind one, inconsistent feathering out- some are not feathering properly, and six in two days who have eaten themselves so fat that they can hardly stand. They are five weeks old. We isolated these and put them on greens and brewer's yeast. They are improving already, after the second day of doing this. They are on packed sand so that they can't scratch their feed onto the ground for later without us being able to scoop it out easily, if they bothered to get up while they eat... My partner gave them five minutes with feed today. Otherwise it's greens only.

Pure redbros are supposed to be vigorous and robust. These are energetic when they aren't too fat, but some cannot stop eating. They will just sit at the feeder and eat. Others run around all the time. There is just no consistency in the group. They look like inbred birds, not pure lines.

We chose the redbros because we didn't want to do the food rationing usually needed to raise meaties. It has only really become apparent this last week that they are not pure hybrid. Previously we just wondered if they were different hatch dates (hatchery was very unclear about this, but then admitted that the birds were a week old when they sent them on a flight across the country). Now we can tell that the variation cannot be within a week hatching, but rather the birds are inconsistent.

It seems to me from what I've read the last few days, these birds are probably the result of the hatchery breeding redbros with redbros, and ending up with a large number of recessive genetic traits. I paid premium price to receive redbros.
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I'm miffed.

It's reputably-bred, heritage birds from now on- no exceptions.
 
I think there is a lot of differance in the Rosambro and the FR. They differ in size, feather color, grow out time and breast meat yield in my opinion. The FR is allot more along the lines of Nolls Meat birds but are more expensive and in my opinion not as hardy. This I believe is because Nolls has bred and raised thier own strain of meat birds not imported a few and started breeding with a much more limited genetic base. That is my 2 cents worth. But I could be wrong.
 

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