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

[Beer can]

We haven't bought eggs in yrs. As far as supplying all protein requirements, well we have about a dozen of the best chicken soup meals during the winter with leftovers, maybe a few bbqs of our birds during summer. Other than that I don't think we could afford to feed them.

 

[Rose Quartz]

I see i'm a bit late to the party.

I have a family of 6. One small as an example 12 week old barred rock cockerel will do my family 2 nights most of the time. That's for a full carcass cooked in the oven. Second night it's either chicken soup which could last a third day, or chicken fried rice.

I guess my family doesnt eat a lot of meat. I hatch my own eggs, and have been blessed with 70 - 80 % males hatching this year... So I actually had quite a lot go to freezer camp.

First group i got 26 chicks - 6 girls (i kept 3 boys)
Second group i had 18 chicks - 5 girls
Third group 16 chicks (they're still young and im not sure on all the genders yet) - 6 known girls

And i have 20 eggs in the incu

I also had 4 other chickens that were butchered that were older.

I havent run out of chicken meat yet, but i have been buying all other types of meat at the store. Boy has been hunting for deer, but hasn't gotten anything yet.

I've really only just started farming. Maybe at some point I'll get higher numbers. But for now it's been more than enough killing for me this year.

My oldest girls have only just started laying. But i know that we dont eat a lot of eggs most of the time but when we do it's 1.5 to 2 doz at once. More if i decide to bake.

 

[Mimi13]

A chicken lasted her 2 weeks, old ladies and their soup you know.

I’m sitting here shaking my head Yeah, Yeah, and then thought, “Damn, I’m probably that old woman!”

 

[Mimi13]

we have about a dozen of the best chicken soup meals during the winter with leftovers,

I really need some of these soup recipes. I mean, us old ladies and their soup.

 

[mandelyn]

I'm late to this post too it seems.

It took 3 years to build up the flock to get the birds we needed in order to provide 2 people with meat and eggs year round. Next year we should be eating like kings.

Our goal was 72 extra roosters per year. That means that at minimum, I have to hatch 144 eggs. So I need to set at least 160 in a batch to account for duds/quitters. Then there is the space to manage that many, so I break the years hatch down to quarterly batches. 60 eggs set every 3 months, as close in age as possible so that they can live together. A batch gets sorted every couple of weeks, moved to a bigger area each time until they hit the finishing coops.

The finishing area has a 1/3rd acre pasture that the boys go to at 3 months old. All of the boys from a batch, sometimes with a good cockerel who's older and acts as leader bird and trainer. At 16 weeks we start sorting through them, mean ones first who want to cause drama in the flock.

We do Bresse and Marans along with some hybrids. The breeding boys are selected from the grow out area for having better size/shape/type/temperament/health/vigor when compared to their peers. If they're better than their sire, the sire gets replaced.

As a rule we don't eat the girls, they're either breeder prospects, layers or sellables to offset the feed bill. Where we live you can barely give away a rooster for free, so to be a breeder we have to have a male management plan. I have to keep all of a hatch, for the most part, until gender is known. We don't ship birds or eggs or anything, everything is local.

Hatching eggs need to be about a week old tops for the best performance, so if I need 60 eggs for a batch then that's at least 10 hens in active lay making "hatch worthy" eggs. I have 45 girls at any given time. Who knows when a bird will take a break or lay wonky or otherwise not make the perfect hatching egg. So we have sellable eggs, house eggs, dog eggs and hatching eggs. 7 roosters "at work" at any given time, not counting cockerels in grow out.

Breaking it down into batches makes it easier to manage, in terms of feed bill, brooder/pen cleaning, keeping the fresh water coming... we raise Turkeys too. I would rather raise some all of the time instead of trying to raise them all at once. What if the power goes out and I lose everything in the freezer? Dual purpose heritage types "store on the hoof" until about a year old, if needed. Sometimes you need that full year to make a breeding decision, depending on what all you're breeding for.

 

[Chickassan]

Chicken was served once a week on Sunday if the family was fortunate enough to be able to.
Not many were though.

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.

If you throw in butts and feet then yep Mimi im lookin at you.

I’m sitting here shaking my head Yeah, Yeah, and then thought, “Damn, I’m probably that old woman!”

 

[Ribh]

I didn't expect to make a difference but @ our end of the street there are 8 houses & my 9 birds supply 6 of those houses with eggs. I have warned everyone they will go off the lay @ some point but my neighbours are waiting to go to the shops until they see if I have spare eggs. Two of us have veggie patches & we have started bees. No, it won't change the world or make any sort of impact on commercial farming but if I can't improve the world for every chicken I can for the ones I keep. It does not supply all our needs but it supplies some & that is better than nothing.

 

[Shadrach]

Before anyone else states they can supply their family with enough chicken meat to supply their families protein requirements from x number of chickens....
I'll take 6 chickens as an example.
6 dead chickens will as a rough average supply you with 6 x 140 grams equals 840 grams of protein.
Divide this by 60 which is the upper limit of protein requirements per day, gives you 14 days of chicken based protein.
To supply 60 grams of chicken based protein for a year you need 60 grams of protein per day for 365 days equals 21900 grams for one years supply for one person.
You can't get 21900 grams of protein out of less than 156 chickens at 140 grams per chicken.
For a family of 4, which was my original model that's 156 chickens per person. 4 x 156 equals 625 chickens.
There really isn't any getting around this. How you produce that many chickens each year is another matter, be it by incubating eggs and growing chickens until they reach their full bodyweight, or by buying them at a store. The fact is you have to have the chickens to eat to supply that amount of protein.

Next, there is what constitutes a meat eater.
I don't tend to call myself a meat eater because I eat very little meat, I'm closer to a vegetarian in reality but I do eat meat.
It seems reasonable to define a meat eater as someone who supplies over half their protein intake by consuming meat. I think this is reasonable because if I go into a restaurant and order a meat dish over half of the protein will be supplied by the meat and not the vegetables. As an example, if I order chicken chips with a salad, a common dish here, I'll get a chicken breast which on average has 30 grams of protein. The chips and salad may contribute 5 or 6 grams.
Taking the above into consideration supplying half or more of ones protein intake with meat seems to be a reasonable definition of a meat eater for the purpose of this discussion.
Lots of people eat like this, supplying at least half their protein requirements with meat.
So, for one person defined as a meat eater for one year they need to consume 78 chickens.
For a family of 4 on the borderline of vegetable or meat based, this gives 312 chickens per year.
Given the restaurant example above where maybe 80% of the protein is supplied by meat then 400 chickens per year seems reasonable.
What seems to be being overlooked is it doesn't really matter which model you take you need a particular number of dead chickens to supply a given amount of protein. A flock of 6 or 7 can't do it. You can make a flock of 6 or 7 produce more chickens by whatever method but the numbers still work. You need so many chickens to produce a given amount of protein.

 

[NHMountainMan]

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.

I'm just amazed your can have this debate with English not being your native language.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm just amazed your can have this debate with English not being your native language.

English is my native language. I'm a Scott. I just happen to live here in Catalonia.