Flock size

[waddles99]

Is a flock of, say 50 chickens any harder to care for than 10 chickens? I would like to get about 50 chickens for my egg project. Obviously, 50 chickens would need five times the coop space, run, and feed. Plus all the extra costs. My thinking is, besides the costs, if you're going to put the care into 10 chickens it will be the same as putting the care into 50 chickens. You're going to be out there taking care of them anyway, whether its 1 or 5 or 10 or 100. And you might as well, since you're out there feeding them anyway, get more eggs out of it to possibly sell. But anyway, my real question is are 50 chickens THAT much harder than 10 chickens?

 

[21hens-incharge]

IMO yes. There is a lot more chance of illness and the poo to deal with. It is a lot easier to feed, water and clean up after 10 than 50. I have 22 and it is a chore to clean everything. The water gets dirty a lot faster and I carry more food out than if I was only tending half that.
What is your situation land wise? Space available? etc...
I get way more eggs than my family can deal with even if it was only ten layers. I do sell my extras but worry someone might get an egg with a nasty meaty bit in it.

A couple of my hens lay these every now and then and I am careful not to sell any of their eggs.
Right now I have 2 weeks of eggs in the fridge and it is a lot of eggs.

 

[Den in Penn]

Yes it does take more time and effort to care for fifty them ten. If you scale things up and use larger feeders that you have to dump a bag in every few days or so and use nipple waters or a larger waterer in an cleaner area or off the floor those chores only take about the same amount of time. With more eggs of course egg handling will take more time. Its cleaning the larger coop and watching them for problems that will add the time. But that isn't harder it is just taking more time to do the extra work, but even that isn't even near like five times more. There is efficiency in scale.