We're planning dual purpose birds. I read somewhere that layers generally have 3 really good years, so their suggestion was that you cull a 1/3 of the flock each year to give you a 3yr rotation.... Sounds good to me but then we started doing the math. We originally thought we'd need about 30 chickens since there are 10 of us and we eat a lot of eggs. But then if we eat 2 chickens a week that's 104 chickens to cull each year!! So how do we do this?? Our goal is self sufficiency. We'll have cows we're raising for meat and milk and the chickens will free range, but I can't imagine having 300 chickens!! We don't eat that many eggs!
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