freedom rangers

[jodiv]

After much hype and hullabaloo over these meat birds, I decided to give them a try this year. I ordered around 75 of them. 25 were my parents 10 were a freinds and the rest were for my family. I had heard and read that yes they were slower growing, didnt eat as much, foraged well, and didnt have that many problems in general. They were very quite comparible to the cornishX. I received them the last part of may, around the 18th.

here we are in october and half of them have been processed. Much to my dismay, they were not at all what I was hoping for at all, and my parents were dissapointed as well. We picked the biggest ones of the bunch, which by the way were not very big at all, and plucked and cleaned quite resembled a year old rooster in my book. They have nearly eaten me out of house and home. I cannot belive how much feed these guys go thru, not to mention all the scraps from the garden, plus the foraging. With all this, I couldnt belive that they were still so small. Not to mention tough birds. My father said the skin was like shoe leather, and the meat was quite stringy.

Although I have found ingenious ways of cooking tough birds, it wasnt my intention to do so with these. I currently still have about 30 and have been pouring on the feed in hopes they will put on some size. I told my father never again, if I had only bought the cornishx, I would have been able to butcher in 2 months. The last cornishx's i had reached a whopping 9 pounds, fully dressed, with the majority being 8 pounds or there abouts.

So my question is, any one else dissapointed with these freedom rangers? Pros, cons?

 

[jimmythechicken]

Thanks for posting I was thinking of trying these next year.we raise lots of orps so o am just doing extra roos about 20 this year.but next spring was going to do a few meaties think I wil try cornish cross

 

[jodiv]

I raise orps as well, and honestly, if I had to compare flavor and texture, my orp roos, were not nearly as tough and were actually more flavorful than these meat birds...go figure! LOL

 

[sheila3935]

I'd like to hear what other experiences are too. I am going to raise meat birds next spring and have been wondering what kinds to get. I thought about doing some of both and see which works and taste better. Ideal has a red and black cornish cross that is suppose to take a tad longer then the regular cornishX, but not as long as the freedom rangers.

 

[Tracydr]

I'm raising the Ideal red broilers right now. They are almost three weeks old and look good, almost as big as the Cornish in the same small batch. Will keep everyone posted. I have a bunch of red packing peanuts, too, some of which I suspect are red broilers, too.

 

[Bossroo]

What you are experiencing now is typical of an exclusive right to produce and sell operation that is experiencing an explosive growth in a very short time frame... A victim of their own success and original exclusive contract obligations. The original flock was a crossbred composit parent stock that has become a closed breeding group. They have to rapidly increase their breeder flock to meet demand for chicks, so they are starting to retain breeders that are not quite up to the original standards due to their inbreeding depression/ genetic regression to the original crosses that made up the cross bred birds. Therefore the current chicks sold to the public consumer may not reach the original performance goals one has become used to. I hope that they can come up with a satisfactory solution.

 

[pat3494]

I processed 25 Freedom Rangers in September and I was pleased with the result overall. Some of the roosters had dark pinfeathers but they grew to the size of a supermarket roaster in 9-11 weeks. I've eaten two so far and they had good flavor and were only slightly more firm than a supermarket Cornish Cross. I got my chicks from Randall-Burkey and they even reimbursed me for one that was a runt. They produced a very meaty carcass but ate and drank quite a bit more than my dual purpose chickens I've raised in the past. I would raise these birds again.

 

[JerBear]

All of our birds are free rangers, and they took allot longer than a cooped bird to make butchering weight. But we had almost no chiggers, ticks, skeeters, or any other bug around this year. And we fried up some roasters and they were yummy!

Jerry

 

[Two Creeks Farm]

Had great success with our FR...looking forward to the next batch in the spring!

 

[moonsynth]

Got 51 ranger chicks this summer, brought 50 to slaughter. Pastured in electric netting. Very happy with weights, taste, texture! These are REAL chickens.