Some Questions...

[ThePigeonKid]

1. How many Cornish Rocks would a family of 6 eat in a year? (I'm looking for an estimate).

2. How long will the meat keep after the chicken has been butchered?

 

[KBlue]

I'll assume you'd need two 4 lb birds per meal. Let's say you have two chicken dinners a week (so four birds/week). 52 weeks/year and you're looking at about 200 birds.

As long as they are frozen and packed in a vacuum pack, they should last up to a year.

Hope that helps!

 

[ThePigeonKid]

Thanks! That's what I needed to know!

 

[KBlue]

no problemo!

 

[4-H chicken mom]

Any fresh chickens you get will be well worth it.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Nobody can guess how many chickens you will eat.

How many times a week do you eat chicken? Do you have fried chicken and everybody eats 3 pieces, or do you cook half a chicken with noodles or in a stir fry?

I am raising 50. That's just about 1 chicken a week, and my family eats 1/2 a chicken at one meal. So I will be serving chicken 2 times a week all year. That's all I need because I also have ducks, geese, and elk. I buy pork and beef. My family doesn't want the same thing every night.

One thing you can do is to split your chicken raising into separate batches. Raise a batch in the spring and then you can see how you are doing and buy enough in the fall to get you through until next spring.

Freezer space is an issue. If I do 50 chickens all at once, that takes up a lot of freezer space. I own two extra large freezers and I fill them to the brim at butchering time. Don't raise any more chickens than you have space in the freezer space for.

They will store for about a year if they are hard frozen and wrapped so no air can get in. They will not last more than about 3 months if they are in a freezer that has auto-defrost. The freezers for storing food are really cold. Much colder than the freezer in your fridge.