An official chicken expert...hmmmm...sure would like to see one of those. I heard they no longer existed.
They all taste like chicken, of that I can assure you. The birds raised more naturally will have more texture to their meat but are not "too tough to eat". Being penned into tight living conditions does not create calm or stable in chicken terms, which is why you will see posts on here where CX are cannibalizing one another when they are raised in that manner.
I have never, nor would ever, raise any chicken where they could not move around too much, so I have no perspective from that viewpoint...but you have only to read about them in this section. They die of "flip"~whatever the heck that means....I guess when a man falls to the ground in heart failure we should start calling that "flip", it sounds so much more appealing than cardiac infarct.
They develop leg deformities and weakness, even sustain broken legs from the fast growth and little exercise from confinement type setups. They even develop gangrene along their keel bone from the pressure of lying down all the time due to their immobility issues. They also develop gangrene in the deepest muscle tissue of the breast due to merely flapping their wings, which should be a normal chicken occurrence, but can spell disaster for these birds because their muscles are undeveloped from inactivity. They have blisters and abscesses that develop on their breasts due to lying down too much. They have dirty, scant feathering due to growing too fast and lying down too much.
The people who raise chickens in boxes on the ground(pastured, but not really) or in other confinement situations will claim that the CX is "too lazy" to forage and will literally eat themselves to death by lying by the feeder, unable to stand but still eating from the feeder. That "too lazy to forage" is a common fallacy that they really want to believe so they can justify raising the birds in this manner, but it's a big ol' fat lie. The CX forage better than any bird I've ever raised in the past 36 years because they are hungrier...a hungry bird is a foraging bird.
If you don't believe that, I have the video to prove it.
Confinement raisers will try to convince you that losing 5-20% of the CX to sudden or unknown causes of death is "normal" for this breed and that you shouldn't feel bad or worry if they just die that way. It's not normal, let me assure you. There are many out there raising these birds like they raise their free ranged layers and have no losses whatsoever.
Raising them in your back yard, confined to a small space and feeding the same feeds and amounts they feed commercially will only get you a bird that performs, looks,dies/lives and stinks just like a factory made bird...but it will be in your back yard. It would be cheaper just to buy it at the store because you will be eating the same quality of meat and the bird will have suffered the same life. No one wins in that situation.
As to the last question, the free ranged or paddock raised CX fed on a restricted diet will get more birds to maturity/butchering age than will confinement setups. And, yes, you can raise them alongside your layers with a few minor adjustments to the feeding setup. You can even feed them on what your layers eat without problems occurring.
