Turkey Tracks: May 24, 2011
Freedom Ranger Update
The Freedom Ranger meat/layer chickens are growing like weeds. You might remember that they arrived in the mail about a week before we left for our Charleston trip. Here’s a picture of one that’s about a week old. Rose and I were admiring the wing colors. Freedom Rangers are hybrids, with four distinct grandparents. So, it’s impossible to reproduce a Freedom Ranger by breeding them to each other. There is only one company that markets the eggs–and only a handful of companies worldwide that market all hatching eggs commercially. Freedom Rangers are the famous “Red Label” chicken sold in France. They are both meat chickens and layers, and they arrive with varying color combinations. They are good foragers, food sturdy birds.
Here’s what they looked like last week when we arrived home. Now they are about three weeks old. They’re growing so fast that they have bare patches under wings and the like, so they look quite scruffy. But, their feathers will catch up with their bodies soon.
Look at the size of the feet! We think the real “big foots” may be roosters.
As soon as we can tell hens from roosters, I’m bringing home one of the hens as a layer. It will be hard to pick one out as they are all so beautiful.
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