All Heavies

Just ArrivedMy order of 15 + 1 surprise of the all heavies males arrived today. All 16 chicks look healthy and were happy to find the food and water first thing out of the shipping box. This is my first round raising chickens, but I'm very pleased with the birds so far. They were clean, active, and ready to explore their new home.

interesting variety!We got 25 of these for meat birds and to keep one rooster for our newly established flock of hens. They arrived very healthy and vigorous and all survived to butcher. There were so many different colors and shapes of chicks that these were interesting to watch, grow and guess which breeds were included. We kept the speckled Sussex for our rooster and he is very sweet and pretty but there were some mean roosters in this bunch that we were glad to butcher! We butchered at 4 months but wished we had waited to 6 - 12 months as they were a little scrawny! They free ranged so once they were big enough to let them loose they ate practically no broiler finisher so they were cheap to keep which wouldn't be the case if I had to feed them over the winter before butchering. The meat was tough from free ranging so I have to brine the chickens before cooking but then it's tender meat. Raising this variety of roosters was an exciting adventure for us and the kids but we will be ordering from the meat bird varieties this year!