All my chickens are still chicks or haven't actually arrived in the mail yet so I don't have any. BUT I did apply chicken math to how many chicks to order and I didn't even know it!
1) So I got 6 1-day old chicks from the neighbor. Only one was a silkie but it died. 6-1=5
2) I HAD to have a silkie which led me to looking around the internet for somewhere to order from. I only planned on ordering a few but after looking around I realized that they don't sell them just 1 or 2 at a time. At Ideal Poultry you have to have a minimum of $25 which equaled approximately 10 chicks and I was going to go with an assortment of feather footed bantums so I could have a variety so should be 5+10=15
3) Then I thought, "Yes but there's no guarantee that there will be silkies in the assortment." So on top of the assortment I added 3 silkies for good measure. 15+3=18
4) Then I thought, "But I really should have some standard chickens for egg production and not just veiwing pleasure." so that leads to a complete redo of the order 18-13=5
5) So after careful consideration I decided that Standard Brahmas were the ones I wanted. I was going to get 4 pullets and 1 cockerall 5+5=10
6) The assorted feather footed bantums could include brahmas and I don't want to be overrun with one breed so I decide to not go with that assortment. Now my assorted silkies, it's a st run so I've got to order enough that I have a good chance of at least getting some pullets and not all cockeralls 10+5=15
7) So now I'm at my intended order quantity but....I really did like those d'Uccles that were included in the feather footed bantum assortment.... 15+5=20
8) Ok I should have my order straight now.....WAIT! What was that one chicken called that the neighbor had? It was so cute! 20+5 bantum cochins=25
So my original 6 birds quickly became 25 in less than a week. And the best part is that my boyfriend understood my reasoning! lol
Then when it came to designing the coop and run the chicken math came out again. lol.
1) A 5x10ft coop and 10x10ft run for the chickens
2) But what if some of them don't get along?? Make that 2 coops and 2 runs of equal size
3) Hmm..... once the hens are old enough they'll start laying eggs and there's a good chance some of those will be fertilized since I'll have roos which means when the eggs start hatching I'll have more chickens than two coops and runs can hold, plus I might have to seperate the babies so we better make that 3 coops and 3 runs
4) Well hold on.... some of those chicks are bound to be roos that I don't want and I'll need to seperate them somewhere so I better make another coop and run to seperate the for sell/for eating roosters. That brings us to 4 coops and 4 runs.