Surprise Chick

[ChikinInThePines]

Hey everyone! My wife and I received our chicks around the middle of April. We ordered Anconas, Americaunas, and Barred Rocks. We only lost one from the shipment, but the one surprise chick is definitely a curveball! She started off as a normal size little yellow chick, but now she is 5x the size of the other chicks and lays down a lot. She is extremely heavy too. I’m kind of upset if we just received a meat bird…here’s some pics of her. She’s reddish with some black spots. Her legs are bigger than even some of our 4 month old chickens!

 

[BastyPutt]

Yes, strangely that looks like a red ranger or freedom ranger. If I started off white it could be a red sex link cockerel, but based on what you are saying for size and laying down it would make sense that it is the former.

The good news is, rangers typically can live a decent life opposed to a Cornish cross. They don't develop so freakishly fast and are kept by a lot of folks as breeding stock.

One thing I will add is that we actually stopped with the rangers because the roosters were so dang mean. I lost skin on nearly every processing day because they attack like a pit Bull and it just became unsafe for our kids to be around them. I always scoff a bit and feel sad processing meat birds, but these guys it always felt like vengeance or justice.