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Good point! I am new so bear with me....... In chicken math - Bantams count as about 1/3 of a chicken 'cause they're little. In coopenometrics, Bantams count as 1/2 a chicken because they can be twice as wide as tall.......with 6 bantam and 5 LF , I need at least 10 sq. ft of pen space per bird......my pen is about 6" shy....so I need to extend the pen.....I used chain link and I certainly want to get made sections instead of rolls....those come in 10'x6'.....so I'm adding another 60 sq ft to the pen. Oh crap! That's not 10 sq ft per chicken! I'm way over..... I have one chicken that counts and 160 sq ft. now! I need 15 birds! Better order chicks, cause adults would disrupt the current happy flock.......but, then I could end up with some roos.......
How many chicks do I need to order!!????
ok, so let's work this through...
If I've understood the word problem correctly, you've got 6 bantams, 3 ornamental LF hens, one laying LF hen, and an LF rooster...
you're correct that bantams are 1/3 of a chicken, but as you said they're wide, and they don't KNOW they're 1/3 of a chicken so we'll give them Chicken Size Factor credit for 1/2... so Fcs(bantam)=0.50 . You didn't say if they're laying or not, but since you only mentioned one egg a day we can derive that they're not.
now the ornamental LFs aren't making eggs, therefore they don't need as much feed or yard-scratching space as the layer, so we'll give them a Scratch-Room Factor Fsr(OrnLFs) of 0.75
Your rooster isn't laying eggs either, but he's got other things to produce so we'll give him extra scratch room. Fsr(roo) = 1.5
So now, let's calculate your chicken yard space...
#_of_birds (Nb) * Chicken_Size_Factor (Fcs) * Scratch_Room_Factor (Fsr) * SqFt_Per_Chicken (Ysqft) = Yard_Size
or
Nb * Fcs * Fsr * Ysqft = Yard Size
so for your bantams: 6 * 0.5 * 0.75 * 10 = 22.5
for your ornamental LFs: 3 * 1.0 * 0.75 * 10 = 22.5
for your laying LF: 1 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 10 = 10
for your rooster: 1 * 1.0 * 1.5 * 10 = 15
so that's 22.5+22.5+10+15 ...you need a total of 70sq ft of yard...
unltil your ornamental hens start laying, and then you need 77.5 sq ft
and if your bantams start laying you need 86 sq ft
Since we've already determined you need to add another section at 6x10', now we can work this backwards to figure out how many chicks you should order...
if you add 60 sqft, you can add
16 non-laying bantams, or
12 laying bantams, or
8 ornamental LF hens, or
6 laying LF hens, or
4 roosters
of course, if you add 4 roosters, you'll need to add 32 hens, and that takes another 235 sqft of yard if they're not laying, and 320 sq ft of yard if they are...
wait, how many linear feet of coop wall space (for nest boxes) did you say you have?
probably not enough.
so how many linear feet of wall space do you have in your garage?
and you don't want the chickens roosting on your car, so park that on the drive, and we'll add the garage floor space to the coop space.... for this calculation, refer to the reference section in the back of your coopenometrics text book...
edited because I found an error in my math....
