Wrong About Freedom Rangers

Reader Contribution by Troy Griepentrog
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Well, I was wrong about Freedom Rangers. In Cornish Cross or Heritage Chicken: Which Do You Prefer?, I wrote that they “fall somewhere between heritage chickens and Cornish Cross.” But if heritage breeds are at one end of the spectrum, and Cornish Cross are at the other, Freedom Rangers are much closer to the Cornish Cross end of the spectrum. I raised 26 Freedom Rangers this summer and fall.

The Freedom Rangers did well on pasture; they may have foraged a bit more than the Cornish Cross that I raised last year. I received 26 chicks on July 30. That night, I put eight of the chicks under a broody hen. She raised those chicks until they were about five weeks old. The other chicks were brooded under a heat lamp, but had access to pasture when they were less than a week old. Because we had some pretty hot weather in August, making sure the chicks didn’t overheat during the day was more of a concern than keeping them warm.

I expected the chicks to grow more slowly than Cornish Cross, so I fed them 24-percent protein starter for several weeks. Then I realized how quickly they were growing and reduced the protein level to 20 percent. I started noticing many of the chicks walked much like Cornish Cross chickens — a slow, tromping gait. I backed the protein level to 15 percent. Before they were eight weeks old, one of the cockerels was virtually unable to walk, so I slaughtered him. Another cockerel was even less mobile by the pre-arranged processing date when the birds were 11½ weeks old (Poultry Processing: Processing Chickens in Fall 2010).

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