Ranger issues?

[LaurenRitz]

Far left is a Buckeye. Middle is a larger Ranger pullet, far right is the Ranger cockerel.

 

[Wildgrass]

Thank you for sharing this! I'm doing my first ever meat birds this year and was feeling great about having Rangers, up until about 2 weeks ago when I started seeing mobility issues in the bigger roosters. Their slaughter date is tomorrow, but if it wasn't, I would have a lot of birds I needed to cull for humane reasons right now. I hadn't known this was an issue with the breed, or with feeding high-protein feed.

 

[LaurenRitz]

I harvested the Ranger cockerel tonight. Live weight, 5.75 lbs. Finished weight 4.5 pounds at 11 weeks.

I discovered that on top of his mobility problems he was having difficulty breathing. The carcass doesn't have a lot of fat on it, surprisingly. He looked massive, but apparently it was mostly feathers. The organs looked normal.

The feathers came off easily, but left behind a large amount of very visible pin feathers.