Responding to the original thread starter. We have 41 birds chickens, guineas, and game fowl. You can't really average the number of chickens people have, it varies to much. For beginners, I'd say 6-18 would be a sufficing number.
Chickens can have meat. Even chicken itself, though I personally don't do that :/. Wild chickens will naturally eat meat. Like BeeKissed said, they are scavengers, not vegetarians. When I want to put weight on my birds I give them beef/pork fat, they love it, never got hurt.
Chickens know what's poisonous and what's not poisonous. Our chickens ate some mint once, never got hurt. Mint isn't a delicacy for chickens so they don't pay much attention to it.
Hi,
I've heard that raising ducks and chickens together can be a doorway to trouble. I guess it makes it more likely for them to transfer diseases. This is only things I heard and read, not experience.