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

[Shadrach]

My Leghorns even lay while they are molting maybe a little fewer eggs then, but they never stop laying.

I'm glad you wrote that. Many people still believe that moulting and stopping laying are in some way biologically connected.

 

[Peepsi]

I mean, Shads numbers are hot garbage and therefore so are his conclusions. And those "conclusions" about a whole swath of this community are absolutely insulting and he led off with them in the OP. As Ridgerunner said - garbage in garbage out.

Whether or not Shad is as bad as his model is up for debate/personal opinion. ;P

I do find it funny though that shad can say things like "A few of the more intelligent posters seem to have understood", "providing for the family and not supporting the meat industry are self righteous delusional nonsense", and " Believing you are making a difference to the amount produced by the commercial concerns is in my view delusional"...

...Yet I'M the one throwing about insults somehow for pointing out how terrible his model is? XD

Well now!
View attachment 1964701

I think the problem is that your posts appear to be a lot more inflammatory than Shad's. Like this one. Rather than say "hot garbage", a kinder way to phrase things would be "the model appears to highly exaggerated, and the data may not be reliable. Therefore, the conclusion is highly unlikely". See how much more professional that sounds?

And the drama llama gif is bit much and unnecessary. Those sort of memes always come off as trolling, even if you did not mean it that way.

I hope this helps.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

True about not challenging ideas
I posted that I do raise all my poultry and eggs... As an example of someone who does , so it can be done. A couple of others did also.

It super can when you look at real numbers. Certainly I get all my eggs for myself and two other households in my area from my flock of 9 right now with spares for hatching.

It's possible for me to raise all my chicken meat on my land too. It's just challenging. I almost pulled it off one year, we bought only about 4 chickens worth of meat that year from the store, but it was hard to keep up. Doing it in the fall keeps the neighbors happy but makes butchering very difficult because of the ice cold at the end of the grow out period. Doing it in the spring makes it smell terrible and upsets the neighbors. So we butcher in the fall when we do a meat chicken run but it's very challenging as a result. We'd do half every year but the CX producers won't let us order so few and the stores only have them in the spring.

I raise rabbits instead as my main on-site meat protein which are more practical for a smaller operation. But I would do chickens more if I was working with more land. As it is my back yard is 1/8th of an acre so it's not a postage stamp but it's not enough either.

Modern high tech AG says that it's about 1.5 acres of farmland (including cattle) per person when you buy from a store so that doesn't sound so bad. I feel like I could meet or exceed that on an intensively managed small scale and the land exists to do that and is in use for that purpose already. But I have 1/4 acre total, only half actually usable so it is what it is.
The land per person and the resources for every person to grow their own food or to eat from exclusively smallholdings exists in the USA. We just don't use it that way, even though we could with almost no changes to our diets. It would take a massive restructuring but every small step in the right direction works towards both that and bringing that idea to the broader public.

@Peepsi, it doesn't. I was plenty polite despite his leading off the whole topic with an insult and then he continued to not be. Then Shad himself told me I wasn't being blunt enough (and lamented how I couldn't be more blunt) so CLEARLY he doesn't want me sugar coating how bad his assumptions are. Additionally, I don't feel bad for calling out bad ideas with insulting conclusions as bad. Everyone has bad ideas sometimes, it doesn't mean the person who made them is bad. That's much more determined by how they handle it once they know it's indisputably bad.
Memes are a primary form of communication for younger generations and is directly humorous and an accurate expression of the moment. So I don't feel bad about any bit of it.
But I'd be happy to educate you on how younger generations communicate through pop culture and the integration of memes as an effective communication and highly nuanced language form for expression in a digital era sometime if you'd like. I know some people who wrote their thesis on it.

 

[Peepsi]

@Peepsi, it doesn't. I was plenty polite despite his leading off the whole topic with an insult and then he continued to not be. Then Shad himself told me I wasn't being blunt enough (and lamented how I couldn't be more blunt) so CLEARLY he doesn't want me sugar coating how bad his assumptions are. Memes are a primary form of communication for younger generations and is directly humorous. So I don't feel bad about any bit of it.
But I'd be happy to educate you on how younger generations communicate through pop culture and the integration of memes as an effective communication and highly nuanced language form for expression in a digital era sometime if you'd like. I know some people who wrote their thesis on it.

Yes, I am well aware of how young people use memes to communicate. I'm also aware of how they use memes to troll as well, being plenty familiar with sites like 4chan, as I know you're aware of as well. I know that you probably know that certain memes used in certain situations make people who do not know you, assume that you're a 4chan or Reddit troll, which I know you probably aren't. That last meme came off as trolling, IMHO.

Anyway, Thanks for listening.

 

[Kris5902]

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

I’m of Scottish heritage as well so please pardon my ill humor... but no “English” is not you native language! When my (Glasgow born and raised and he never lost the accent) grandfather called for the first time to speak to my mother when I was about 12, I was convinced it must have been an Asian speaking telemarketer calling?sorry couldn’t resist... I’m also Fluent in Newfie and now can usually follow Scottish fairly well

And I do still need to comment on the OP, but need to catch up a bit... how did I miss this thread?!? One of my Favorite topics

 

[Molpet]

It super can when you look at real numbers. Certainly I get all my eggs for myself and two other households in my area from my flock of 9 right now with spares for hatching.

It's possible for me to raise all my chicken meat on my land too. It's just challenging. I almost pulled it off one year, we bought only about 4 chickens worth of meat that year from the store, but it was hard to keep up. Doing it in the fall keeps the neighbors happy but makes butchering very difficult because of the ice cold at the end of the grow out period. Doing it in the spring makes it smell terrible and upsets the neighbors. So we butcher in the fall when we do a meat chicken run but it's very challenging as a result. We'd do half every year but the CX producers won't let us order so few and the stores only have them in the spring.

I raise rabbits instead as my main on-site meat protein which are more practical for a smaller operation. But I would do chickens more if I was working with more land. As it is my back yard is 1/8th of an acre so it's not a postage stamp but it's not enough either.

Modern high tech AG says that it's about 1.5 acres of farmland (including cattle) per person when you buy from a store so that doesn't sound so bad. I feel like I could meet or exceed that on an intensively managed small scale and the land exists to do that and is in use for that purpose already. But I have 1/4 acre total, only half actually usable so it is what it is.
The land per person and the resources for every person to grow their own food or to eat from exclusively smallholdings exists in the USA. We just don't use it that way, even though we could with almost no changes to our diets. It would take a massive restructuring but every small step in the right direction works towards both that and bringing that idea to the broader public.

@Peepsi, it doesn't. I was plenty polite despite his leading off the whole topic with an insult and then he continued to not be. Then Shad himself told me I wasn't being blunt enough (and lamented how I couldn't be more blunt) so CLEARLY he doesn't want me sugar coating how bad his assumptions are. Memes are a primary form of communication for younger generations and is directly humorous. So I don't feel bad about any bit of it.
But I'd be happy to educate you on how younger generations communicate through pop culture and the integration of memes as an effective communication and highly nuanced language form for expression in a digital era sometime if you'd like. I know some people who wrote their thesis on it.

I raise my own meat birds with broodies. They are a mix of heritage and CX. This year I did incubate and give the chicks to hens. ... Because it's been weird weather and eggs haven't been hatching under broodies, just rotting. .
I don't have to process them all at once like CX

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Yes, I am well aware of how young people use memes to communicate. I'm also aware of how they use memes to troll as well, being plenty familiar with sites like 4chan, as I know you're aware of as well. I know that you probably know that certain memes used in certain situations make people who do not know you, assume that you're a 4chan or Reddit troll, which I know you probably aren't. That last meme came off as trolling, IMHO.

Anyway, Thanks for listening.

Yeah, those exist. I doubt many of them would come into a chicken keeping forum to confront bad chicken keeping models, though.
Some people are also deeply, WILDLY, offended by "Ok Boomer". So I don't really pay much attention when people are offended by situationally appropriate memes.

Best of luck. I hope you get those first eggs soon if you haven't already.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I raise my own meat birds with broodies. They are a mix of heritage and CX. This year I did incubate and give the chicks to hens. ... Because it's been weird weather and eggs haven't been hatching under broodies, just rotting. .
I don't have to process them all at once like CX

I tried crossing a CX hen with my flock a few years back but didn't actually get any chicks from her eggs at the time (could have easily been my fault). Since then I've had to replace my entire flock due to raccoons so not a single chicken from then is alive now. But I might wanna try it again sometime. Especially when I have more space to keep more than one breeding line.

 

[Peepsi]

Yeah, those exist. I doubt many of them would come into a chicken keeping forum to confront bad chicken keeping models, though.
Some people are also deeply, WILDLY, offended by "Ok Boomer". So I don't really pay much attention when people are offended by situationally appropriate memes.

Best of luck. I hope you get those first eggs soon if you haven't already.

Thanks for the well wishes on the eggs. Can't wait for February to get here!

 

[Shadrach]

The topic about what is the ideal clutch size is interesting. I'm doing a study for a UK university on The Hens Broody Strategy and clutch size is a part of this.
It's generallly assumed that a hen lays a lot of eggs because they 'know' that a high proportion of the clutch will not survive. This isn't so important when a hen is kept in a broody coop; the predation rate on eggs before hatch is likely to be small. I've had hens sitting outside here lose almost half a clutch to various egg predators. weasels and rats mostly.
After the hatch the most chicks I've had from any one hen has been 12 (this was a long time ago) Out of those 12, 2 never made it out of the nest, 1 more got killed by it's siblings, another probably got killed by the mother judging from the wounds. That left this hen with eight chicks. Trying to feed eight chicks without being provided with feed from an outside source is very heavy going for a mother hen. Generally the chicks that hatch first are the strongest and get to whatever the mother hen finds first. I can recall watching this hen work pretty much flat out from dawn to dusk trying to feed the chicks. I did eventually intervene and supply feed. Even then simple things like trying to keep 9 chicks warm or protected from rainfall was almost impossible and the weaker chicks received less protection and warmth. Through predation I've assumed (maybe some just got lost and died) this particular hen ended up with 5 healthy pullets and cockerels.
One of the men in the chicken club here mentioned that over many years of chicken keeping he and others had found that the survival rate became optimal at between 4 and 6 hatched chicks.
I've been told by other posters on a few threads here that you can slip a dozen or more eggs under a broody hen and she'll hatch them. No argument from me, you can indeed do this. However, in a free range setting on average here about a third of the chicks are lost before the mother stops caring for them. The relief point here has been when the chicks have been integrated into the tribe and settled in. Belonging to the tribe means they get added protection.