The nuggets are here!

Post title: The nuggets are here!
Date: August 5, 2013

Our baby chicks arrived in the mail on Thursday! 25 little 'nuggets' and one 'rare exotic breed' chick thrown in for a bonus.

'Nuggets' are what we call the little fuzzy meat bird chicks. We order Jumbo Plymouth Cross Rock chickens, straight run. These birds are nothing short of amazing. They are a hybrid, bred from 5 or so chicken gene pools. Their most striking traits include the following:
Their primary interest is eating. They eat voraciously whenever there is food available. We usually pick up their food at night so they will sleep; otherwise they eat all night. I don't think the Colonel is so considerate...
They reach full-size (~ 5 lbs. fully dressed) in 8 weeks +- 1 week. Which is great, because in 8 weeks, we go through 40 lbs of grain, 150 lbs papaya, and 50 lbs of rice, so we are ready to stop feeding them!
After 7 or 8 weeks, they get a little heavy for their legs also, and risk dislocation of their joints or actually breaking their legs. They can also develop heart and lung problems if you let them go too long before 'harvesting' (a popular euphemism for butchering, which I guess sounds too real).
They have fewer feathers than your typical barnyard bird, easing the plucking operation.
They stay indoors in a brooder for the first 3-4 weeks, then we put them out in their pen. At that point, we call them 'lunches.' Later, when they start to resemble roasted chicken on legs, they are 'dinners.' But right now, the nuggets are cute little yellow chicks, just like Easter.

With every order from Murray McMurray Hatchery, we get a free rare exotic chick. The surprise bird. That's how we got Fop. That's how we got Speckle. This batch's free one is black with a yellow spot on its head and a yellow butt. We think it's a Cuckoo Moran. Which would be great, even if it's a roo, because we can cross it with an Americana and get some more olive-eggers! Yay!