Cornish Cross vs Freedom Ranger Chickens | Raising Meat Chickens on your Homestead | Pasture Broiler
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- čas přidán 28. 07. 2024
- When raising meat chickens on your homestead there are a number of factors - taste, health, time, cost butchering. But there are typically only two options - Cornish Cross vs. Freedom Ranger Chickens. Here’s our experience and recommendation after raising both.
See full review in our blog post: fromscratchfarmstead.com/corn...
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We used to hate raising Cx until we got a a great tip from a more experienced grower. If you have the means to keep them in poultry netting, just start them with their food and water 10' apart. Every week, move them another 10' and it keeps them moving around. We tried that for the first time last year and it was like raising completely different birds.
We've raised pretty much every type of meat chicken minus kosher kings, but the difference is pretty striking. Red rangers have fantastic taste, but are double the cost and time to raise. Freedom Rangers take a little less time, but are still nearly double the cost. If you give them room to move and manage them properly, the Cx are just amazing
Thanks for sharing! We do know a farmer friend who raises Cornish cross similar to how you are describing in netting and has a much better experience with them. Our experience with the freedom rangers wasn’t near double the cost but everyone does things a bit different. We haven’t written off the cross but our experience using a tractor, and the overall taste and enjoyment of the bird, was much better with the rangers.
@@FromScratchFarmstead you enjoy the flavor?
@@howardvaughn9241 you mean of the cross or rangers? We do prefer the taste (maybe more the texture) of rangers over the cross. You seem to get more dark meet with the rangers and when you slow cook it you get super tender and juicy meat. With cross you Get a lot of white meat and the texture is different. But we've had both prepared in delicious ways and, at the end of the day, I'd take either if they're raised properly.
Going through a similar decision process and your feedback helped confirm some of my findings and others I've seen on CZcams. Thanks for sharing your experience from several perspectives.
You’re welcome! Glad it was helpful!
My wife and I live in town we have a big yard . We just ordered the freedom rangers . This is our first time doing it . The reason we went with the freedom ranger is for what you just talked about in this video. Thanks for the great information.
Glad this was helpful!! Very exciting! I hope you have a great season and experience with them!
Thanks so much! Your videos are very helpful. I'm getting my first Freedom Rangers and just my first meat birds ever... about a week before Christmas. Can't wait!
Awesome!! You got this! It’s so rewarding raising your own chickens for meat. Thanks for watching!
Good review guys. My family will be raising Freedom Rangers this year as well after having raised Cornish the past three years. Looking forward to seeing/tasting the difference.
Awesome, hope you have as good an experience as we have had! Thanks for watching!
Thank you so much for those wonderful pieces of information 👍🏿
So glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!
Had the same experience with Cornish cross. Fluid on the legs, etc. It was bad enough that our bantam chickens would hang around the CC's to eat gnats that they attracted for some reason - but the Cornish were stressed by them while the others ate them. They just don't seem like chickens in the full sense of the word.
Thanks for sharing and watching!
Great video. I’m on my first batch of cc. They really seem to forage pretty well. Well, some are lazy, some are active & forage more. So maybe it’s just the genetic line you got? I have had no losses yet, only 3 weeks in. Maybe it’s where a person buys their chicks from that makes a difference too? I also am fermenting their feed, wet food takes longer to eat and they don’t spill it as much. Plus I am a very sensitive Celiac so my feed is expensive! 🙄 I cannot even be around floating particles of wheat… that is why I am raising my own, safe meat = I sometimes get sick from beef, chicken, pork from stores (probably cross contamination during processing - the grain in guts…). I like our Suskovich tractor, not much bending over for this old body! 👍🏼 I do use lawn mower to move it, yep pretty slow doing it myself so I don’t run them over… 🙄 hubby gets to do it on weekends 👏🏼
Wow, that's quite an accomplishment to be three weeks in on your first round of meat chickens and not have lost any - regardless of the type of bird! Sounds like you are raising some healthy chickens! I do imagine there's genetic differences between hatcheries. I'm sure we could have a very different experience doing it all over again. Plenty of homesteader and farmer friends we know raise cross and have good overall experiences with them. That's great to hear how you are taking your health into your own hands. Keep it up!
I've raised the Cornish X and didn't have as high a loss. The two keys are getting them off newspaper onto shavings as soon as they've learned to eat from the feeder, and 2) limiting their feed intake. If you give them unlimited feed, especially on 24 hours of light, you're gonna have a lot of leg joint problems.
I've even kept a few of the hens as layers and made them forage. Not that I'd recommend it, but their first lay window they lay some triple yolks.
Good points! Thanks for sharing. I could see how limiting their feed access would help. And wow, a triple yolker!
Raised feeder height early is helpful in making strong legs.
Thank you. We have done the Cornish cross and they wouldn’t even go outside. We are definitely going to try the freedom rangers. Thanks for the video
You bet, and hope the rangers go well for you!
Hey guys great video. I just wanted to share my first year of raising meat birds. I bought all 96 Cornish cross from tractor supply probably not the best place to buy them from. But I’m a beginner at raising chickens. My experience is that if you manage their feed the health issues and leg issues they strive and still put on weight and move around with no problem.I fed them once a day and I haven’t loss one yet so far. But good info on the freedom ranger I was also considering trying them out next go around.
Thanks for sharing your experience! That's really good info.
I did twelve of each. I didn’t get any eggs from the free rangers and they took another quarter of a year to make weight to process.
Your experience with these 2 breeds is spot on with my experience (except I don’t have chicken tractors yet). Cornish cross are SO much stinkier than Ranger chickens!
I agree with you 100%, the Ranger chickens are delightful to watch growing up & taste netter in my experience.
Cornish cross are boring & are pitiful to watch growing up.
I plan on getting more ranger chickens in 2023.
(1 raise 27 ranger chickens in 2021 & 40 cornish cross in 2022).
Thanks for sharing your experience! There are good reasons for raising both but like you we’ve really enjoyed the rangers. Good luck with the rangers next year and happy chicken raising!
Thank you! I have only had corish cross birds & orderd red ranger this year. Looking forward to a better bird!
You are very welcome and thanks for watching! Enjoy the rangers!
Thanks for the video! I’m super interested in raising chickens myself some day :)
Thanks for watching and you totally should!! They're the best :)
@@FromScratchFarmstead someday! Sadly chickens aren’t aloud on my townhouse patio. 😂
Great video! Very informative
Thanks! Glad it was helpful.
Good to know. I’ve never raised rangers but I’ll try it now
Awesome! Hope you have a great experience with them. Thanks for watching!!
Great information. Nice to see someone not gung-ho on the Frankenbird. Cheers
Thanks for watching! Most of the info we received was pretty one sided so we're happy to share a different perspective.
New subsciber!
very good video. and I completely agree. This year I'm trying Delaware Broilers from MacMurray. They are a dual purpose heritage breed so you can hatch your own, and they were originally developed to be a commercial meat bird before the Cx was developed. feed out time, butcher weight, etc is supposed to be similar to your freedom rangers and you don't have to wonder whether you can find chicks next year - not being hybrids, they reproduce true to breed so you can raise your own self-sustaining flock.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing! Love the self-sustaining flock idea. You'll have to let us know what you think of them. Thanks for watching!
We like the ones you chose always good to look at orpingtons or Plymouth rocks. They are both good dual purpose birds if they are available.
That’s good to know! Thanks!!!
@@FromScratchFarmstead I completely forgot Rhode Island reds we had around 10 for the longest. They are also a dual purpose bird and can be very entertaining characters.
Great review and I fully agree with your reasons and choice. I only started with chickens last year. I knew eventually I was going to go dual purpose but I swore I would never touch the Cornish X. They border on cruelty to animals; not by all who buy them, but the creators, though supporting this abomination is questionable in itself. I also worry about the quality of life and the heath - Aren't we also what we eat? I have decided to try to create a good dual purpose heritage breed using the Freedom Rangers as part of the mix. I know they don't breed true, but one thing I've seen is they do pass on the growth gene to some of their chicks and the FR hens are prolific layers, which may also pass on to their chicks. Even using the hens for long term egg laying and then eventual stock bird is a great option. I'm aiming for the self sufficiency aspect, including an on property closed loop food system.
Thanks for sharing and agreed, that seems like a great very practical and functional way to go about it! We do that as well with our hens and may eventually go that route exclusively.
I built a sucovich chicken tractor this past fall and raised our first batch of cornish cross and it worked really well. I really like how you modified your chicken tractor & used metal roofing instead of chicken wire & a tarp. Can you show some close ups of how you did this? I am planning on building a second one this year and would like to do it with metal roofing as well.
It's a solid chicken tractor, isn't it?! That's so funny you should ask about the roof because I'm actually building a second one soon myself and was planning to do a video on adding the metal roof! We should have that up in the next couple weeks, but if you need it before then head to our website and email me and I can send you some pictures. I basically fastened three 2x2 furring strips to the conduit on each side - top, middle, bottom - and then fastened the metal roof panels to the furring strips. It seems to be holding up really well so far! Thanks for watching!
We raised 25 of each last year for the first time. Another negative to the CC in our experience was that their bones and skin are so poor that the plucker would sometimes break their bones. Or, sometimes just the muscle spasms after slaughter would break bones.
That’s cool that we had the same experience! Yes, now that you mention it, the CC did not hold up very well in the plucker on our end either. We had broken legs and wings for sure. Good point!
I think the word you were looking for in describing the texture of the Cx is, and I quote from Mike Rowe's video here, "Mooshie". In fact he called it a "Mooshie, water soaked hag." That might be just a bit harsh though....
🤣
You could on the one hand call them Rangers and keep them as you do or you give them on the other hand more space like a fenced mobile run and call them FREEDOM Ranger. I don't understand why it's so important in the US to keep 25 chickens in such a tiny coop instead of adding a mobile fence around their coop and also let them run outside.
Hawks is the big thing! They'd be easy prey out in the field for aerial predators. Plus we grow them alongside many crops we rely on to feed our family, so letting them loose is tricky. We'd love for them to truly free range, but for now moving them on fresh pasture twice a day in the tractors has been the right middle ground. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Thanks for your response. Sure, I cannot judge which predators are around your pastures. When I see the coops I often think they wouldn't survive one night in my area in these coops, except you have really a flat surface, but even then, foxes, martens, etc. would probably find their way in the coop.
Yes it was!
I think the freedom ranger look more atetically pleasing to look at since they're known for foraging id like to use them as composting chickens so they can forage for bugs worms and minimal grain I haven't tried this method yet I would like to this method 😀
Hope it works out well for you and thanks for watching! 🙂
@@FromScratchFarmstead defenetly in fact im going to subscribe to your channel
@@albertod4161 thank you!
Are you talking about the Cornish free range? The Cornish can’t be compared to weight to feed.
I'm not sure I've heard of a free ranging Cornish versus the standard Cornish cross... is there one? These were just regular Cornish cross broilers that we raised on pasture. You're definitely right that you can't beat their conversion of feed to weight. Thanks for watching!
Good video.
Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching.
I'd like to know what you fed your chickens besides grazing ground, flock raiser?
We were feeding them an organic no-soy feed mix from cashton. 22% protein to start and then we switch to 18% after a couple weeks. We switched to a different organic feed now with similar results. Thanks for watching!
Can you tell us more about your red stove and where you got it?
Yes! It's an AGA, we have a few videos about it if you look up AGA cooker :)
Did you ever try Sasso or Kosher Kings? I’m trying those this summer and I have a hunch the Kosher Kings will be my favorites!
No, but we’d love to hear how it goes for you!
@@FromScratchFarmstead sure will let you know!
Its been 2 years. Do you stand behind your vidoe?
Yes!! We are doing freedom rangers right now!
Hello from London. Great video with a lot of information. Very healpfull 👍. I have already sub for more 🙂. Have a lovely week!!
Thank you so much!! We really appreciate it!! Take care :)
Did enyone catch this that cornish cross just like cows eat and lay to digest and don't lose Energy when free rangers are still picking and going and picking and going in small chicken tractor is not nice to watch them it is just like to lock Mustang in barn box for whole life:-( they will be better or even better grown if they have big range to search food:-)
Thanks for the comment! We are always working on better systems for our farm and totally understand your point. The tractor keeps them safe from predators and gives them shelter from heat and elements, but we'd love to figure out a system to give them more opportunity to free range in the future :)
We have lost a few chickens to the hawk by letting them go free...a pretty horrid way to die.
Yes, definitely is. We let our flock of layers free range and lost a couple to a hawk last year. We recently got a livestock guardian dog so we’re hoping the hawks stay away now🤞