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

[Ridgerunner]

Say you have one rooster and six hens as in ridgerunners arrangement and you eat 45 chickens a year.

I mentioned 45 because that's what I eat each year.I'm not trying to make chickens a major part of my diet. There are only two of us also, not the four people in your example. If you follow my calculations using my assumptions you can get 210 chickens a year from 1 rooster and 2 hens. Since you are talking grams of meat and half of the chickens in my assumptions would be smaller pullets, get a third hen. That way you could raise 315 chicken year, plenty of grams. So that is four chickens, not 500.

My view, the claims about providing for the family and not supporting the meat industry are self righteous delusional nonsense....unless of course you have 500 chickens.

....

Assuming the above figures are reasonable then the claims that backyard chicken keeping has any impact on the large commercial production of eggs and meat looks unrealistic to put it politely.

I don't see the vast number of people on here keeping chickens to try to have an impact on the commercial chicken industry, either eggs or meat. I see many people that would prefer to raise their own, even if the cost is greater, which it usually is. Some people will rant and rave about unrealistic things, but you'll get that in any large group. You can't assume that the fringes are the norm. I guess I really don't see where you are trying to go with this.

If you use your conditions as the only way you could raise that many chickens for the table, you are right, it would take a lot of chickens. But if my goal were to get half the meat I eat from chickens I raised, I would not use your model.

You could possibly adapt @Ridgerunner s model in a back yard but what you would be doing is running a small hatchery, not really keeping chickens.

I would want a lot more than 4 grams of protein a day to run a double incubator system, pullet pens (remember it's a back yard) and have hopefully a free range flock of the initial rooster and six hens.

So you consider keeping a rooster and 6 to 8 hens year around (and raising your own replacements) and hatching and raising 45 chicks a year for the table (some incubators and brooders, some broody hens) is not "keeping chickens"? Interesting thought process.

A free ranging flock or one rooster and three hens can provide enough eggs to hatch 300 chickens a year for a double incubator system if you collect the eggs. No pullet pens involved.

I'm not sure what your definition of free range is. I've had brooder raised chicks free range from age five weeks. No fences whatsoever. Here in the States that would meet the definition of free range. But after a few years I started having significant predator losses so now I use an area inside electric netting. Technically that would be pastured since they have forage year around. But free range is a different topic from how many chickens you would need to hatch 208 or 300 chickens a year.

 

[Chickassan]

When I kept for my Gran she insisted 24 were for the pot.
A chicken lasted her 2 weeks, old ladies and their soup you know.
14 and a rooster were for eggs and replenishment.
So 35 chickens, for one person is totally feasible.

 

[aart]

I like some accuracy in language if that's what you mean. I find it helps get things understood. I do realise how horribly old fasioned that is these days when people have a horrible habit of telling you language is dynamic and what was a definition yeaterday no longer applies.
Here the example would be, You can call a farm a backyard. We all see and do things differently etc etc.

It's pretty hard to define 'backyard' and 'farm' and 'all the others you mentioned'....many are colloquialisms, many are fad based pretensions. The backyard chicken craze has many calling themselves 'farmers'.
Fact is, language is fluid, it's not like numbers/math.
I find some of the changes in definitions of terms and words to be annoying as hell,
but am too old to beat my head against those brick walls for long anymore.

Some of the 'definitions' and scenarios you've posed over your time here have been vague and missing many variables. But they make for some interesting discussions.

 

[lomine]

For every chicken I raise and butcher myself, it's one less chicken I buy from the grocery store. Is that going to make an impact on the factory farms? No, but that's not really why I do it.

This whole thread seems a bit weird to me. What exactly is the point? There are a lot of people who raise enough meat to feed their families. It's not a realistic goal for everyone but it is do-able. Even if you can't raise it all, buying one chicken from the grocery store doesn't somehow negate all the good done by raising what you can. What's the point of poking holes in the practices of others who are trying?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Er, I'm seeing a whole host of problems here.
So I have NO idea how you got your numbers???? My flock of 9 chickens produced 8 eggs last week and it's the dead of winter. Even if that were my weekly average, which would be piss poor (little more than one egg a week per bird??? Who would keep a chicken laying like that for food?), I would still get 468 eggs a year so why would I need 100 chickens to produce 500 chicks?
More realistically a flock of ten, which easily fits in my suburban lawn produces literally thousands of eggs each year. If each hen produced 200 eggs a year that'd be 1800 eggs. If half were food (900, that's nearly 3 eggs a day for eating eggs) and then half didn't hatch (450) and then a tenth didn't even make it I would have your theoretical 400 chickens per year, my replacement chickens AND all my eating eggs...? So it sounds to me like a ten chicken flock can meet your demands if someone were to work hard at it.

But even using your numbers for number of "chickens needed"...!
I don't eat chicken or eggs as much as your theoretical number.
I don't raise only chickens.
Not every household is four.
Little bits DO add up.

So more realistically your 500 birds can quickly drop down to 250 for two people. Then if you're not someone eating slab-o-chicken 5 days a week, you can easily bring it down to 125/year.
But again, bits add up, so if you wanted to, say, provide 1/10th of your two persons chicken meat for the year you'd need, what... A dozen birds? Thirteen? Certainly I manage that. And that's supposed to be with a breeding population built in so realistically if I don't build in a breeding population and do a run of 20 birds each year I can provide 1/5th of my chicken meat for my household. A fifth is nothing to sneeze at, especially given how small most modern properties are.

As for eggs I think with the exception of december and january, a flock of 4 hens would provide my household of 3 with all the eggs they need. As it is I have a flock of 9 (one roo, one pullet too young to lay) and we get WAY more than we could use in the summer, we sell some, we gorge on eggs all summer long (quiche becomes a regular dinner in the summer) and then we maybe have to buy a dozen in the winter for baking. With the exception of baking, we go without eggs for a month or two in the winter.

So, like, what 25 birds (20 of which are only there 3 months) a year to provide a household with all its eggs and 1/5th of it's chicken consumption? I think that's surprisingly manageable. I do it with space to spare. (Mind you, I don't grow all their feed, but that's a totally 'nother issue and not the goal post we're addressing.)

I do runs of 15-25 meat birds but on 1/4 acre it's just not feasible for the land to handle that well more than once a year so I gladly turn extra boys and old hens into meals. My main on-site protein source is rabbit. I've been digging into keeping quail in the future as well because of their smaller maintenance footprint and easier waste management.

Qualitative factors matter too. They're not quantitative but a lot of value in life isn't. The joy of a job well done, the satisfaction of hard work, the knowledge that you're doing SOMETHING good and productive, the happiness of raising animals, the knowledge that at least THESE ones lived a good life with a swift end, the amazing feeling of holding a newly hatched chick... The flavor and color and texture of something home-raised VS commercially raised...! That stuff is valuable but you can't crunch out easy protein-cost-population numbers to fit into the argument for it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

So... Yeah, I would say it IS easy for people who raise chickens for meat to have an impact, especially on an individual level. Provide 100% of their protein or even chicken from their own land? No, that would require a national restructuring towards the needs of people and a more agrarian society. But an impact? Yes. And is the whole of commercial agriculture going to crumble and fall because we raised a few backyard chickens? No, of course not, but are our INDIVIDUAL lives going to better for it? Is it going to matter to us, the chicken keepers, and the people around us that we may also serve? Heck yes. Absolutely.

And would the chicken industry notice if suddenly the whole population stopped buying even 1/20th of their chicken? You bet their bottoms they would. That would be MASSIVE. Unlikely, but theoretically possible.

 

[The Moonshiner]

You don't need 500 chickens to produce 400+ chickens per year.
Producing 400 chickens a year is easy. Feeding 400 chickens a year to butchering age would be the issue.

 

[Cyprus]

My family is vegetarian.

We eat MAYBE 4 eggs a week. So 3 hens is more than enough.

 

[Morrigan]

I think this debate reflects the sheer abundance and choices we have today.

It would be interesting to go back to say, 1850, to see how much animal protein people were eating and how they were acquiring it. I suspect that, without refrigeration, chickens, along with fish and small game like rabbits, were going to be the main protein source for a lot of people. Were most rural people keeping 100s of chickens, to ensure full chicken dinners multiple times a week? I tend to doubt it. I suspect they were they eating one chicken a week and a lot of potatoes.

 

[Beer can]

I think this debate reflects the sheer abundance and choices we have today.

It would be interesting to go back to say, 1850, to see how much animal protein people were eating and how they were acquiring it. I suspect that, without refrigeration, chickens, along with fish and small game like rabbits, were going to be the main protein source for a lot of people. Were most rural people keeping 100s of chickens, to ensure full chicken dinners multiple times a week? I tend to doubt it. I suspect they were they eating one chicken a week and a lot of potatoes.

And a occasional deer

 

[centrarchid]

I could come close with 12 hens and two roosters. Younger hens would produce table eggs while older hens would produce chicks that would be for most part eaten. I would strive for the older broodies to produce three broods per season. I am not above eating feet and even bones. Not all my protein would be coming from chicken, the majority would still becoming from plants.