How many chickens would you need to keep to supply all the meat and eggs your family eats?

[aart]

I eat very little meat mainly because I object to the way commercially produced meat is kept and processed.

What about other foods....and how their commercial production and processing impacts the earth and the people who work in that industry?
Or is it only animal welfare that concerns you?

 

[Shadrach]

Now...people who eat meat with every single meal...that's another story, LOL.

I think a lot of people do eat some meat with at least two of their meals per day.
Part of the problem here is the contributors to the site do not represent the rest of the population in general.

 

[Mimi13]

It may not make a tich of difference in the whole food system scenario, but it can make a huge difference to individuals and families and how they view the food system. ...which really was the point of backyard chickens in the first place, until anthropomorpism kicked in.
The world is rife with delusion, no doubt much right here on BYC too.

This is it in a nutshell!

 

[Peepsi]

I think a lot of people do eat some meat with at least two of their meals per day.
Part of the problem here is the contributors to the site do not represent the rest of the population in general.

That is probably true. Although lately, there has been a push among the general populace to cut back on meat. It's expensive, for one, and it's not all that sustainable.

Personally (and I'm probably the only one on here that feels this way), I think we humans should try farming insects such as crickets and mealworms to help with our protein needs. They taste delicious & nutty (i've tried both), and can be used in many ways, and are probably easier to farm and more sustainable. I know, I'm weird.

 

[Shadrach]

What about other foods....and how their commercial production and processing impacts the earth and the people who work in that industry?
Or is it only animal welfare that concerns you?

When I first came here to manage the smallholding there was talk of trying to be self sufficient. The people who lived here one hundred years ago got close. The amount of work is incredible and of course any year nature can have a bit of a tantrum and you're wiped out.
So, yes, I do have concerns about commercial food production in general. Replacing everything you eat with stuff one grows oneself is a truly mammoth task.
Like many here on BYC, I try to do what I can. I buy locally grown veg and fruit. I rarely buy meat from a supermarket. When I do buy meat it's from the local butcher who gets his meat from the local farms. We used to supply some of his lamb.
Mostly it's animal welfare that concerns me but I'm not a fan of some of the radical approaches to changing this.

 

[MysteryChicken]

I keep around 50 chickens maximum for both eggs and meat, we recently slaughtered 5, now were down to 40. We get around 6-7-10-13 eggs average a day depending on weather. We maxed out with 14 eggs a couple times.

 

[Mimi13]

I did not begin keeping chickens because of any one specific reason other than an enjoyable, educational hobby with a side order of better tasting, lower cholesterol eggs. This was my main reason.

I know how poorly any animal raised for food is treated, yet on the grand scale of things I seriously cannot change that. I, personally, do not dwell on such things, I just can’t. I still buy chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A, steak dinners from our local steak house, shrimp and lobster from Red Lobster, and on and on and on. My family is not totally self reliant, as many more families out there aren’t either. However, I do enjoy my chickens, immensely, and their eggs taste better than any store bought egg. And even though I do process extra cockerels, my entire family is not sold on preferring the fresh chicken taste. Maybe that will change. But as for now, I will provide eggs for my family and friends, and a chicken or three along the way.

As previously stated, I am not self sufficient and don’t try to be, but if the time ever came where we needed to, my family would buckle down and set up camp. I’d get my act together and start a process of providing not just chicken, but beef, pork, fish and venison...along with my garden.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think eating chicken back then was probably a luxury...as were the eggs.

It may not make a tich of difference in the whole food system scenario, but it can make a huge difference to individuals and families and how they view the food system. ...which really was the point of backyard chickens in the first place, until anthropomorpism kicked in.
The world is rife with delusion, no doubt much right here on BYC too.

I'm going to sort of disagree with this Aart, especially on the eggs part. The meat not so much but some. In 1850 a pretty large part of the population in the US and probably a fair part of the rest of the world lived in rural areas or very small towns or villages. Keeping a flock of chickens that pretty much fed themselves in season (winters were rougher for some, depending on climate) to provide eggs and occasionally meat was pretty common. There were exceptions, there always are, people living in cities for example. And many small town people did not keep chickens or did not keep a breeding flock. But for a lot of people eggs were a staple, not a luxury. I'm basing that on the farm I grew up on, how I saw my grandparents and some other relatives live, and how some of my neighbors lived in Appalachia, a poor region. There was so much diversity it's hard to generalize, even there.

In my experience eating chickens was not a luxury, we ate excess cockerels and older spent hens and raised our own replacements. We relied on broody hens. When a hen went broody Dad would decide if we should give her a dozen eggs to hatch and raise or whether to break her. That decision was part of his farm management. Those broody hens would probably hatch out maybe 40 chicks a year so that's what we ate. If Dad wanted to rely more on chickens we could have hatched out quite a few more. His flock was typically one rooster and 25 hens. Those hens often went broody. We used a rabbit hutch as a broody buster.

We raised hogs, which is where we got most of our meat. Those were fed on slops, kitchen wastes, and things that we grew, including some weeds we gathered. We raised cattle but that was a cash crop, calves to be sold instead of eaten. Maybe 10 times a year we'd go to the lake on Sunday afternoon and catch fish, partly for a fun family outing but partly for the meat. And we ate a lot of dried beans. A typical supper was dried beans, cornbread, milk and raw onions. I thought it was a good meal. Many of our meals were meatless, especially lunch and supper. Our staples for breakfast were eggs and pork.

Aart, one of your sayings is where romance meets reality. Shadrach is putting up a purely hypothetical situation with his assumptions. If you use his assumptions and definitions he is right. If you control the assumptions and definitions you control the outcome. In my experience I find his assumptions to be more based on romance than reality. I think a lot of arguments wouldn't even start if we could agree on definitions. People that really rely on what they raise to eat would not do it that way. I was raised with people that relied on what they raised. It wasn't easy ans they did not go out of their way to make it harder.

I agree on the delusion of many people on this forum and in the world in general. For some, romance never meets reality.

 

[Mimi13]

I'm going to sort of disagree with this Aart, especially on the eggs part. The meat not so much but some. In 1850 a pretty large part of the population in the US and probably a fair part of the rest of the world lived in rural areas or very small towns or villages. Keeping a flock of chickens that pretty much fed themselves in season (winters were rougher for some, depending on climate) to provide eggs and occasionally meat was pretty common. There were exceptions, there always are, people living in cities for example. And many small town people did not keep chickens or did not keep a breeding flock. But for a lot of people eggs were a staple, not a luxury. I'm basing that on the farm I grew up on, how I saw my grandparents and some other relatives live, and how some of my neighbors lived in Appalachia, a poor region. There was so much diversity it's hard to generalize, even there.

In my experience eating chickens was not a luxury, we ate excess cockerels and older spent hens and raised our own replacements. We relied on broody hens. When a hen went broody Dad would decide if we should give her a dozen eggs to hatch and raise or whether to break her. That decision was part of his farm management. Those broody hens would probably hatch out maybe 40 chicks a year so that's what we ate. If Dad wanted to rely more on chickens we could have hatched out quite a few more. His flock was typically one rooster and 25 hens. Those hens often went broody. We used a rabbit hutch as a broody buster.

We raised hogs, which is where we got most of our meat. Those were fed on slops, kitchen wastes, and things that we grew, including some weeds we gathered. We raised cattle but that was a cash crop, calves to be sold instead of eaten. Maybe 10 times a year we'd go to the lake on Sunday afternoon and catch fish, partly for a fun family outing but partly for the meat. And we ate a lot of dried beans. A typical supper was dried beans, cornbread, milk and raw onions. I thought it was a good meal. Many of our meals were meatless, especially lunch and supper. Our staples for breakfast were eggs and pork.

Aart, one of your sayings is where romance meets reality. Shadrach is putting up a purely hypothetical situation with his assumptions. If you use his assumptions and definitions he is right. If you control the assumptions and definitions you control the outcome. In my experience I find his assumptions to be more based on romance than reality. I think a lot of arguments wouldn't even start if we could agree on definitions. People that really rely on what they raise to eat would not do it that way. I was raised with people that relied on what they raised. It wasn't easy ans they did not go out of their way to make it harder.

I agree on the delusion of many people on this forum and in the world in general. For some, romance never meets reality.

Amen!

 

[igorsMistress]

I think eating chicken back then was probably a luxury...as were the eggs.

It may not make a tich of difference in the whole food system scenario, but it can make a huge difference to individuals and families and how they view the food system. ...which really was the point of backyard chickens in the first place, until anthropomorpism kicked in.
The world is rife with delusion, no doubt much right here on BYC too.

Well said!