Meat Bird Comparison: Freedom Ranger Hatchery White Ranger, FR New Hampshire, Cornish Rock Cross, and Ginger Broilers

[FunClucks]

WR hen feet. The WR and NH are often prone to collecting dirt/mud between their toes, right where the flap of skin is where the toe connects to the sole of the foot. I go out there periodically and push the globs of dirt out. You see a ball of dirt on her left foot at the base of the outer toe. She also had some areas where her feet appeared a bit swollen. Not sure if that was normal, or she kept injuring herself on something because she was so heavy, and built up some scar tissue. On her right foot, that may be a healing bumblefoot scar, it was really hard to keep her healthy.

Comments welcome.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

They have larger poops because they are larger chickens. But I think their poops were more like normal chickens than CX poops. I found CX often had looser poops with more undigested? food. Give the WR a try and see what you think. I found that the brand of food had an impact on how poops smell, because different brands of food and protein levels smell differently, but really most of it was the substrate used, and how it decomposed or didn't when presented with the poop, and how much poop to substrate was used.

So if you have smell issues, I'd try changing your substrate and the brand of food. I had a few meat birds that I had to go from wood chips in a covered run to pine shavings changed daily (had a weather event and coop collapse and moved them into my garage in crates for a bit, changed substrate 2x daily). The ginger broiler roos I processed after about 4 weeks on pine shavings while feeding 20% chick starter had none of the smell that CX or GB raised on wood chips in my covered run had. Much better smell. I can't afford 100% wood chips and changing 2x a day in their main setup, but it was interesting to learn how much of a difference the bacteria in the wood chips, or wood chips had on the smell of the birds I was processing.

very interesting.