Nope, Teachick, you have the wrong attitude.
1. NEVER add up the number of chicks. You need to be able to TRUTHFULLY say, "I have no idea how many chickens I have, but it can't be very many"
2. If the spouse ever actually SEES the chicks, you need to have ways to get around that too.... Your choices are:
- split them up into separate groups, so you never see them all together
- explain how any minute now, there will be fewer than you can currently see (an eagle will kill some, I am planning on selling a few, we will eat all of the males, and most of those are males, and aren't they tasty when they are bar-b-qued??? )
- evasive answers, "but I have ONLY five leghorns, and those others....well you know how the boys are, they talked me into it" also, I am already planning for " I know that that LOOKS like a lot of eggs, but often the hatch rate from shipped eggs is only 1%!!!! "
I see. Well, I try to keep up with how many chickens I have, but I hatch/buy/lose them too quickly to really keep up. I think we've been holding steady at 24 for a while, but I've got two eggs in the bator (not holding my breath for them), and I'm waiting for my Cochin to go broody and hoping that my one sex-link does too. I'm letting them both collect a clutch, so hopefully I'll be able to TRUTHFULLY say "I have no idea how many chickens I have, but it can't be very many."
This is how I "count" my chickens at night to make sure that they're all in their respective sleeping places: and I quote "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine white big chicks, one, two brown big chicks, here are your two DS, one, two, three Leghorns (white), one, two, three Comets (brown), a Snoodle, Eddie, and Marty, and one, two, three, four cute little bitty white (I wanted partridge or barred) Cochin chicks. Yup, got everybody." Then DH asks, when I get in the house, "Chickens all locked up?" and I say, "Yup", so I don't ever really count all my chickens, I just make sure everybody's there.
Yes, we're going to eat the males, but my big chicks are mostly Leghorn, so I'm going to have to bar-b-que two or three of them to feed my crew.