The Lowdown on Broiler Breeds

This month we are restocking our roasting chickens. A chicken that is raised for meat is called a broiler, while chickens raised for laying eggs are referred to as layers. There are a vast variety of laying breeds, it’s actually unknown how many breeds of chickens there are as hatcheries are constantly cross breeding and producing their own “specialty” chickens. Today I am going to focus on broiler breeds, which is a much shorter list. The two most popular breeds of broilers are the Cornish cross and Freedom Rangers.

Cornish cross is a hybrid that comes from two different breeds. When crossing these breeds the result is a rapidly growing chick. Cross breeding in chickens is something that is always so fascinating to me because cross breeding in chickens almost always produces chicks which have a uniform feather pattern among the offspring. This is not the case for dogs and cats, you cross two breeds and it’s going to be a huge surprise on what the puppies will look like. I am sure there is some really cool science that explains this but that is beyond my knowledge. What I do know is the Cornish cross breed cannot be bred into subsequent generations because it is a hybrid resulting from years of intentional breeding and a carefully controlled genetic line. All fowl have one thing in common, babies grow fast but broilers are on a whole other level, it’s almost as though you can see a noticeable difference in their growth throughout one day! If you purchase chicken meat in a grocery store, 99.99% of the time, you are purchasing a Cornish cross. The selective breeding has produced a chicken that is obsessed with eating grain and can get up to 5 pounds in under 2 months and are commonly harvested at 6 weeks of age. For reference, it takes most laying hen breeds 5 to 6 months to get up to their mature weight. Due to the fact this breed has been raised inside barns for decades, they have lost the natural insticts that you see in layers such as scratching at the ground and foraging. Of course, they still eat the grass and can scratch around, but for the most part they are a “lazy” breed that lays down around their feeders most of the day. Due to their rapid growth, they have a higher percentage of leg injuries and internal organ issues. They are also susceptible to deep pectoral myopathy, aka green muscle disease, which I am sure paints a picture without me having to provide one. I’ll spare everyone the sight but feel free to do a quick google search if curiosity strikes. Deep pectoral myopathy is found in the breast muscle and caused from a lack of oxygen leading to muscle death. This breed grows so fast that sometimes the blood supply cannot keep up. It’s perfectly safe to eat, but as you can imagine most people toss it out upon discovery. These birds are the reason you can find chicken for under $4 a pound, you might be surprised to learn that before the 60s, chicken was considered a luxury meat. Imagine spending months raising an animal that requires daily care, only to get 5 pounds of product when you can toss some cattle out on pasture and in 18 months have 500 pounds of meat with little overhead in the way of labor.

Let’s dive into the Freedom Ranger(FR), this is a newer breed to hit the market. It’s actually a trademarked name but is used in my industry the same as most of us refer to a tissue as Kleenex. Similar to the Cornish cross, FR is also a hybrid that is breed from two different breeds with a tightly controlled genetic line. Freedom rangers grow a little slower than the Cornish cross; here we harvest at 9 to 11 weeks of age. It is rare for them to experience leg or internal issues, and the best part is they actually have instinct to forage. We raise these birds inside coops on pasture and move them a few times daily. Every time I move them, they instantly start pecking at the grass. They are a much harder bird and do well in our hot summers as long as we offer extra care. Cornish struggle here and in the past, with extra care, we have lost Cornish cross in the heat. The big downfall to FR is their dark feathers, which make it harder to produce a perfectly plucked final product.

The popularity around FR has grown substantially among small farmers and homesteaders, most coming to the conclusion the meat takes better and has a better texture. If you have purchased a roasting chicken from us in the past, it was a FR, but that is going to change this year. Due to the growing popularity of this breed we need to place our orders for chicks months in advance and with all the hardships we have experienced in the last year we didn’t have the cash flow to place our first two orders in time. Currently the breed on pasture is the Cornish cross and personally speaking they are my least favorite to raise. The final product will be the same quality, I have supplemented their feed with our non-GMO organic feed and they live most of their life on pasture. But their lack of natural instincts is a turn off for me personally. When I am giving advice to new farmers, I always advise them to not do things they hate, even if it might be the smarter way when you crunch numbers. If you are unhappy with any aspect of the process your output will suffer. I am proud to raise a breed that I feel lives a better quality of life even if it is more work and in turn costs more. Some customers, myself included, want to have this option and I am happy to provide it. The biggest issue I have in my industry is the lack of transparency, created by producer and customer. Consumers want to forget that the meat on their plate was once alive, and producers want you to think they lived a happy life with the terms “cage-free” and “free-range”. So here I am telling you the honest truth about the product we will be producing for the next 5 months and while I am not as proud as normal, it is still better to produce this, then nothing at all.

We have 4 orders of broilers scheduled for the year, the first two Cornish cross and the last two FR. I do look forward to comparing the numbers of the two breeds and will most likely follow up on this topic at the end of the year.

Cheers,