Freedom Ranger

With Dark Cornish no longer in the running for a permaculture broiler breed, I'm starting to narrow down our choices for next year's experiment.  Freedom Rangers were near the top of my list, until I did a bit more research.

What are Freedom Rangers?
The term "Freedom Ranger" is merely an American popularization of the hybrid breed developed for use by French companies operating under the Label Rouge program.  Label Rouge is a certification process, a bit like "free range" or "organic" in the U.S.  Their website is difficult to read if you don't understand French, but ATTRA put out a PDF file about Label Rouge which is worth a viewing (and from which I stole this image.)

Freedom Ranger parents come from a few proprietary lines owned by European corporations.  So, don't think you can buy a flock of Freedom Rangers and raise your own, or even start your own breeding flock by growing the two parent breeds.  Freedom Rangers, like Cornish Crosses, are industrial hybrids.

What are their advantages?
Freedom Rangers are relatively fast growing, but they don't grow as quickly as the Cornish Cross.  As a result, they don't tend to have the high mortality rates that break so many backyard broiler-raisers' hearts.  Freedom Rangers are reputed to grow to 5 pounds in 12 weeks, to be tastier than Cornish Crosses, but to have less breast and larger legs.

Based on one backyard experiment, Freedom Rangers seem to have a feed to meat conversion ratio that's almost as good as Cornish Crosses --- 3.4.

What are their disadvantages?
As I mentioned earlier, we couldn't create our own self-perpetuating Freedom Ranger flock, which is a deal breaker for me.  Having to buy chicks every year makes the meat pricey --- the experiment I linked to above ended up with a cost of $1.73 per pound for Freedom Rangers and $1.47 per pound for Cornish Crosses.

I'm also not sold on Freedom Rangers being good foragers.  If they're so good at catching bugs, why did they eat so much grain?  I think I'll let someone else do that experiment for us and move on to a different breed for our next batch of broilers.