thebasedfarmer
Hatching
- Sep 24, 2025
- 1
- 5
- 6
Good afternoon,
Like many of you I am sure, after growing Cornish cross chicks for the first time I thought to myself, this can't be the best way. So on went my search that brought me to birds like the "Freedom Ranger" and "Ginger Broilers". For me, they were everything I was looking for in a meat bird. The only box buying them didn't check was sustainability as I still had to rely on hatcheries for my birds, and that was just unacceptable. Then started a roughly two year journey of trying to breed my own meat birds. After many, many hatchings and tinkering with the formula, I had gotten nowhere. I had a whole bunch of cool looking hybrids but none of them ever had anywhere close to the growth rate of even a freedom ranger, let alone a cornish cross. After trying and failing for almost two years, I essentially gave up on the project. It wasn't until just a few months ago that I had an "ah-ha" moment after randomly hatching some more eggs for fun. I found that the key is not just to create one hybrid, but its the process of breeding two seperate hybrid lines to make a four way cross that really gives you the growth rate you're looking for.
Ever since that discovery I went even futher down the rabbit (chicken?) hole and I figured since I was doing so much research I might as well compile it into an easy to read pdf file. And since I was doing that, I figured I might as well format it properly and add some more content to make it read more like a manual or something of that sort. Attached is the fruits of those labors. I'm sure there are some typos or other mistakes, if you notice any please do bring it to my attention so I can fix it. There may be some methods or whatever that I use that you may not, and that's fine. But I am sure there will be something useful for you in there.
Good luck to everyone on their chicken adventures, I hope this can help some of you all.
Sincerely,
The Based Farmer
Like many of you I am sure, after growing Cornish cross chicks for the first time I thought to myself, this can't be the best way. So on went my search that brought me to birds like the "Freedom Ranger" and "Ginger Broilers". For me, they were everything I was looking for in a meat bird. The only box buying them didn't check was sustainability as I still had to rely on hatcheries for my birds, and that was just unacceptable. Then started a roughly two year journey of trying to breed my own meat birds. After many, many hatchings and tinkering with the formula, I had gotten nowhere. I had a whole bunch of cool looking hybrids but none of them ever had anywhere close to the growth rate of even a freedom ranger, let alone a cornish cross. After trying and failing for almost two years, I essentially gave up on the project. It wasn't until just a few months ago that I had an "ah-ha" moment after randomly hatching some more eggs for fun. I found that the key is not just to create one hybrid, but its the process of breeding two seperate hybrid lines to make a four way cross that really gives you the growth rate you're looking for.
Ever since that discovery I went even futher down the rabbit (chicken?) hole and I figured since I was doing so much research I might as well compile it into an easy to read pdf file. And since I was doing that, I figured I might as well format it properly and add some more content to make it read more like a manual or something of that sort. Attached is the fruits of those labors. I'm sure there are some typos or other mistakes, if you notice any please do bring it to my attention so I can fix it. There may be some methods or whatever that I use that you may not, and that's fine. But I am sure there will be something useful for you in there.
Good luck to everyone on their chicken adventures, I hope this can help some of you all.
Sincerely,
The Based Farmer
