My husband and I ordered a batch of freedom ranger chicks (26 last fall) as broilers, and decided to keep five of the females as laying hens. I'm impressed so far and wanted to share that info because I've seen a few folks on BYC asking about freedom rangers (or red rangers) as dual purpose birds.
First, the pullets grew larger than I anticipated, 7-8 lbs each (and they are not eating free choice because I didn't want them to get too heavy).
They started laying eggs in late December, at only 16 weeks of age!! I was completely shocked by that. I though they'd go to at least 20 weeks, if not longer because the daylight is short. But they are really starting to crank out some eggs. We have five chickens, and though I'm not sure that all five are laying because they are using the same nest box (and laying on the ground), we've had 18 eggs in 16 days... There have been a couple of soft shell eggs that broke on the ground too.
A couple of the eggs have had multiple yolks (the first egg had three!!), which I'm assuming is just an irregularity as their bodies start producing. Here's that three-yolker in the frying pan...it was a fairly normal size egg, with three small yolks. The shell was a very normal thickness and hardness (I didn't take a picture because I thought our neighbor was playing a joke on us by putting an egg in the pen when he fed them during our holiday travels - I didn't believe it was our first egg until we cracked it and saw the three yolks!) We've had a couple of eggs with two yolks since then...
The eggs are all brown, but have distinct color differences. The picture below is of three eggs I found in the nest box in one afternoon - I checked that morning as well, so I know they are from three different hens. Before you think these are gigantic eggs, please note that I have incredibly small hands... The lightest colored egg is about the size of a "large" grocery store egg, the others are a bit smaller.
We were happy with these birds as broilers and if this keeps up we're going to be happy with these birds as layers too! If anyone else has experience with freedom rangers as laying hens and has any info to share, please do!
First, the pullets grew larger than I anticipated, 7-8 lbs each (and they are not eating free choice because I didn't want them to get too heavy).
They started laying eggs in late December, at only 16 weeks of age!! I was completely shocked by that. I though they'd go to at least 20 weeks, if not longer because the daylight is short. But they are really starting to crank out some eggs. We have five chickens, and though I'm not sure that all five are laying because they are using the same nest box (and laying on the ground), we've had 18 eggs in 16 days... There have been a couple of soft shell eggs that broke on the ground too.
A couple of the eggs have had multiple yolks (the first egg had three!!), which I'm assuming is just an irregularity as their bodies start producing. Here's that three-yolker in the frying pan...it was a fairly normal size egg, with three small yolks. The shell was a very normal thickness and hardness (I didn't take a picture because I thought our neighbor was playing a joke on us by putting an egg in the pen when he fed them during our holiday travels - I didn't believe it was our first egg until we cracked it and saw the three yolks!) We've had a couple of eggs with two yolks since then...
The eggs are all brown, but have distinct color differences. The picture below is of three eggs I found in the nest box in one afternoon - I checked that morning as well, so I know they are from three different hens. Before you think these are gigantic eggs, please note that I have incredibly small hands... The lightest colored egg is about the size of a "large" grocery store egg, the others are a bit smaller.
We were happy with these birds as broilers and if this keeps up we're going to be happy with these birds as layers too! If anyone else has experience with freedom rangers as laying hens and has any info to share, please do!
