Cornish Cross vs Freedom Ranger Chickens | Raising Meat Chickens on your Homestead | Pasture Broiler

Great video! Very informative

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:-)

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

Hello from London. Great video with a lot of information. Very healpfull 👍. I have already sub for more 🙂. Have a lovely week!!

Thanks for the video! I’m super interested in raising chickens myself some day :)

Good video.

Thank you! I have only had corish cross birds & orderd red ranger this year. Looking forward to a better bird!

Great information. Nice to see someone not gung-ho on the Frankenbird. Cheers

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 😀

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

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 👏🏼

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.

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.

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 to know. I’ve never raised rangers but I’ll try it now

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).

I'd like to know what you fed your chickens besides grazing ground, flock raiser?

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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....

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!

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.

Yes it was!

Thank you so much for those wonderful pieces of information 👍🏿

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.

Are you talking about the Cornish free range? The Cornish can’t be compared to weight to feed.

Can you tell us more about your red stove and where you got it?

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.

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.

Its been 2 years. Do you stand behind your vidoe?

im going to go ahead and subscribe. I enjoyed the Video.

Where do you order your Freedom Rangers from?

Beautiful videos! You have very nice weather for this natural farmstead life, which state are you in?

Are you guys going to do a processing video?