Poultry that is free range is more stringy and chewy. It also much leaner and smaller. I lived off free range chicken when i worked summers on my grandfather's farm in Hawaii. It is all personal preference. If you order chicken pho at a Vietnamese restaurant it will most likely be free range chicken or what they call "Walking chicken". It is completely different than a Tyson Chicken from Costco with oversized breast meat.
Really free-range poultry (backyard chicken, rather than chicken grown in a factory with a tiny yard just enough to satisfy free range regulations) is like you say, tough, stringy, full of muscle, with normal-sized breasts and its meat is dark. It's no good for roasting because you really have to boil it for a couple of hours at least in order to get it to the point it's edible. I made the mistake once to only cook a hen for half an hour, like I'd do for supermarket chicken and I spent the night chewing until my jaws ached (I didn't want to throw it out. Poor bird died so I could eat it; so I ate it).
That said, real-free-range chicken makes the most unbelievably godly soup. They have this amazing yellow fat and their skin is thick with it, so they make a really thick broth. Just add a few vegetables, a bit of celery, some carrots, potatoes, and you don't even need rice or anything else to thicken it. I suspect it's that kind of chicken that people mean when they say that chicken soup is good for you when you're sick. It's the kind of soup that could raise the dead.
Edit - I forgot about the bones. Real free range chicken bones are hard. You can't just snap them between your fingers. Well I can't anyway. They're like real bones. Amaze!
Chicken meat and hen meat are different things. Big stores very rarely sell hen (or rooster) meat, normally only the meat of young, immature chicks is consumed, free-range or not.
This is like the difference between veal and beef. The younger animal has softer meat and a different kind of fat.
Sure, I wasn't meaning to imply that there is no other difference, just that it's not fair to compare the meat of a mature hen (which is always going to be stringier) with "regular" chicken meat, which is harvested from non-adult birds.
Comparing free range animals with cage grown ones, the most obvious difference is going to be muscle development: animals that grow up in cages will never have much muscle mass, since they simply have no way to exercise - they will have weaker muscles, and this will be detectable as a different taste and texture. Similarly, fat deposits will often be in different places and of slightly different kinds for animals that can exercise vs those that can't.
Additionally, cage grown animals are typically also fed a cheaper diet, and the diet will always have an impact on the taste of the meat.
And yes, the cage grown animals will likely also have different health issues because of the lack of exercise and poor diet, that free range animals won't develop. But I believe the other factors will have a much bigger impact, especially since these animals are typically harvested while they are pretty young, and may not have developed too serious conditions.
Different breeds. Chickens we eat commercially are bred to to be that way. They can’t even walk without being in pain.
“ Most broilers find walking painful, as indicated by studies using analgesic and anti-inflammatory drugs. In one experiment, healthy birds took 11 seconds to negotiate an obstacle course, whereas lame birds took 34 seconds. After the birds had been treated with carprofen, there was no effect on the speed of the healthy birds, however, the lame birds now took only 18 seconds to negotiate the course, indicating that the pain of lameness is relieved by the drug.”
Here in Singapore and Malaysia, you can get "kampong chicken" (village chicken)... basically the chicken you see running around the village. They're great for soups and have a lot more flavor imo.
