Freedom Rangers

[MissE]

Do you have any recommendations for a good heritage meat bird? Not dual purpose. My RIR are excellent layers, but not that good for meat lol

Jersey Giants were developed to take the place of turkeys. They take a long time to mature, but are very hearty and the hens do go broody.

 

[MissE]

Thank you! Ill look into those as well!

Keep us posted on what you decide and your results.

 

[MissE]

Ranger roosters I have had kept are mean. I will never try to keep one again. I still have 3 ranger hens. Had 1 die last fall unknown why.
I did hatch some birds recently. One was brahma/ranger. After 2 weeks it was outgrowing the others very visibly, but I sold it with the other light brahma chicks.
The other chickens I have are australorp.
The ranger hens get along with the other hens fine.
Have more going to hatch so be interesting see what happens with growth rate.

My rooster has been pretty chill. I think he saw what happened to his buddies and knows what I'm capable of. He's 20 months old now, so if he was going to have an attitude, it should have shown itself.

I should clarify, I have the Rudd Rangers, Hoover's version of the Red/Freedom Ranger. They seemed hardy as chicks and young adults. Didn't lose my first one until they were about a year old. They were pretty fast growing, but I still didn't process the males until 18 weeks or so I think. Hatched June 1st and went to freezer camp in mid Oct. Could have done it sooner, but I had other projects going on, which is why I got them. Wanted the flexibility you don't get with CX.

The two hens I have left from the same batch just started laying again. They were literally scheduled for the chopping block a couple weeks ago. Pretty sure they heard me and got back to work.

I am thinking of hatching some eggs from my Speckled Sussex crossed with my rooster. The SS are little meat bricks compared to my hybrid layers, and I'm hoping to get some decent size and growth rate. I might keep a couple females just to see how well they lay. The Rangers did lay well that first winter, and the eggs were good size. The SS also decent layers, but the eggs are on the small size. Worst case scenario, I eat my mistakes.

 

[PurpleCArTires]

I have never raised cornish cross, but have raised rangers. Yes they will breed though I have not hatched any eggs from them. Nor have the hens become broody at least so far.
Cornish cross have more breast meat and rangers will have more leg meat.
I have not had any health issues from Rangers. I still have 4 hens from last year I use for egg laying.
I have kept the Rangers about 16 weeks and 5 to 10 lbs. Rosters being the heaviest of course. At about 12 weeks seems to me was about 3.5 to 8 lbs. I did not keep records dont really remember the exact details anymore. This is roughly my weights.
This last year I left some roosters for later harvest and they were 20 plus weeks old and they were some big boys and extra fat inside also. This last year was store bought food and free range.
At about 12 weeks we butchered a few and if I remember correctly was roughly $2.00 pound to raise them (after butchering). This was with store bought feed and not much free ranging. I also figured in direct and indirect cost.
I get my rangers from a hatchery here in Wisconsin, not sure if I can put the name or I violate terms of service.

There is many youtube videos rangers vs cornish cross and many articles. I really liked this series on youtube. They did a series on raising both varieties. I thought the series was done very good and there is several videos.

Hope this helps some.

Thank you for all the info!! Good to hear they wont have heart attacks if i tried to keep a few!. I will check out the video also!

 

[PurpleCArTires]

Freedom rangers are different specifically from "red rangers" from your average hatchery. They are a proprietary breed that comes from France and no other hatchery has the same cross. Mostly red rangers from other hatcheries are all different mixes. Just know that all rangers are not created equally. They will all give you different results. I raise about 250-300 freedom rangers every year but have never kept them longer than 10 weeks. From what I understand, they do not breed true and have dwarf recessive gene that shows up when interbreeding.

Oh i didnt know there was a difference! Thank you. I did see in another post there was a few born with tiny legs. If i do try it, i might keep a few hens and breed it with my large RIR roo, he has very thick strong legs. Maybe get some quicker growing mutts out of the mix. My extra RIR roos are barely table weight by 20 weeks. And not real fatty. So just looking to breed out something at home that might be a better source of meat.

I also checked out some other articles where they said the Rangers had more fat and way more flavorful than CX. But are more expensive, so i dont want to buy them every year lol. And CX (if thry are like the grocery store meat...) No thank you. Lol. It tastes like Styrofoam to me.

I like to let my chickens free range so i thought Rangers would be a better option and maybe find some of their own food lol

 

[PurpleCArTires]

Jersey Giants were developed to take the place of turkeys. They take a long time to mature, but are very hearty and the hens do go broody.

Thank you! Ill look into those as well!

 

[iwltfum]

Yes the freedom rangers have lots of excellent fat - as do heavier dual purpose breeds. We make bone broth from parted carcasses and sell it at the farmers market. Starting to gain quite a following with that one.

I've heard of people crossing dual purpose birds with rangers, but I have not come across anyone breeding rangers back onto themselves. A breeding program might be interesting, but you might spend the next couple decades doing the selection work that a worldwide industry has been working on for 100+ years.

Maybe look into bared Plymouth rocks. They get huge. Black Austros are pretty quick too. There are lots of good things about austrolorps, but I dare say the barred plymouth rocks grow quicker.

 

[iwltfum]

Late to this conversation, but interesting year with Freedom Rangers. This is my experience with the breed:

I bought six Freedom Rangers chicks in March of 2020 to add to my flock. I figured dual purpose was not a bad thing, given the way things felt back then.

The chickens grew freakishly fast, fastest I've ever seen. And they became huge by 12 weeks. They were raised with a few Sebright chicks and even though they always towered over them, they were always sweet towards the Sebrights, almost nurturing.

Around week thirteen, two of them just died suddenly. I never weighed them, but my neighbor, a homesteader with a mixed flock, picked one up and said it felt like a small turkey. He said, thinking that they were more for meat, "They seem like they should be in the freezer." They were ginormous.

Two turned out to be roosters, Hector and Billy Bob. I have never known stranger roosters. Hector was free range most of the time and took to hiding in the bushes to ambush us from behind. We separated the two because Hector was just brutal to Billy Bob, chasing him and ambushing him whenever he could. It was almost embarrassing seeing these two fat roosters running, one chasing the other. We are not allowed to have roosters in our town, and they were crowing rarely so we thought we might hang on to them. Well, one day a switch was thrown and they both started singing to each other every minute on the minute, it seemed. So we decided to process them. I gave Hector to my neighbor to process and I processed Billy Bob. On the day the neighbor took Hector,
he chokingly yelled to Billy Bob, "Hey do you want one last shot at this guy, Billy Bob?" and he held Hector about a foot off the ground. Billy Bob made a sprint right up to Hector and pecked him right on the head. It was stunning.

The meat was excellent. The skin very yellow and fatty.

The two girls remaining, Hellen and Gertie, are good egg layers and gave us eggs through most of this winter. They lay medium sized brown eggs. Helen is at the top of the order and Gertie is her enforcer.

Compared to my Australorps and Marans, Hellen and Gertie are not particularly friendly and on the flighty side.

I would not buy this breed again. If I was raising birds to process in the tenth or eleventh week, I would consider them, however.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with them!

Might be just semantics, but I wouldnt call freedom rangers a dual purpose breed. I know some keep them thru and breed them, but they seem to do better after they get toned down by barnyard breeding after a generation or two as opposed to commercial breeding which sort of streamlines them.

 

[PurpleCArTires]

Late to this conversation, but interesting year with Freedom Rangers. This is my experience with the breed:

I bought six Freedom Rangers chicks in March of 2020 to add to my flock. I figured dual purpose was not a bad thing, given the way things felt back then.

The chickens grew freakishly fast, fastest I've ever seen. And they became huge by 12 weeks. They were raised with a few Sebright chicks and even though they always towered over them, they were always sweet towards the Sebrights, almost nurturing.

Around week thirteen, two of them just died suddenly. I never weighed them, but my neighbor, a homesteader with a mixed flock, picked one up and said it felt like a small turkey. He said, thinking that they were more for meat, "They seem like they should be in the freezer." They were ginormous.

Two turned out to be roosters, Hector and Billy Bob. I have never known stranger roosters. Hector was free range most of the time and took to hiding in the bushes to ambush us from behind. We separated the two because Hector was just brutal to Billy Bob, chasing him and ambushing him whenever he could. It was almost embarrassing seeing these two fat roosters running, one chasing the other. We are not allowed to have roosters in our town, and they were crowing rarely so we thought we might hang on to them. Well, one day a switch was thrown and they both started singing to each other every minute on the minute, it seemed. So we decided to process them. I gave Hector to my neighbor to process and I processed Billy Bob. On the day the neighbor took Hector,
he chokingly yelled to Billy Bob, "Hey do you want one last shot at this guy, Billy Bob?" and he held Hector about a foot off the ground. Billy Bob made a sprint right up to Hector and pecked him right on the head. It was stunning.

The meat was excellent. The skin very yellow and fatty.

The two girls remaining, Hellen and Gertie, are good egg layers and gave us eggs through most of this winter. They lay medium sized brown eggs. Helen is at the top of the order and Gertie is her enforcer.

Compared to my Australorps and Marans, Hellen and Gertie are not particularly friendly and on the flighty side.

I would not buy this breed again. If I was raising birds to process in the tenth or eleventh week, I would consider them, however.

Thank you so much for this. Its good to hear I could take a shot at keeping some and mixing them with my RIR for a faster sustainable meat bird. Right now, my Barnyard Mixes and spare RIR roos take about 5 months to get to about 5-6 lbs. Its alot of feed, lol. I dont want to make a new breed, just influence my flock to grow a little quicker and larger lol.

 

[August Coldwell]

Btw, at what age did they actually start laying?

They started laying mid-July, so twenty weeks or there about.