Whats "Chicken Math"!!!????

[chickzndahood]

i heard a couple people say this before but i am clueless and have no idea what chicken math is!! somebody explain this to me!

 

[bakerjw]

It all starts with chicks. You see, chicks are fuzzy and so is the subsequent chicken math.

It's like when you have a conversation regarding chickens with your significant other.
"Honey, can I get some chicks?"
grumble grumble...
"How many? Is 6 chicks too many?"
grumble grumble grumble...
"Honey, I just got home from the feed store with our new 9 baby chicks!"
Ack. GROBBLE grumble ick!
"But these other 3 were so lonely in their own pen and they looked like they wanted company..."
SO shakes head understanding that this battle was lost.

A few months later.
SO: "Why are there more than 9 chicks in the run now?"
Oh, I was at the feed store and someone was wanting to return their chicks but they were too old so they were going to dump them. I couldn't let that happen so I brought them home. See, if you hadn't counted you wouldn't have known there were more.
SO resigns self to another defeat.

A year later...
SO "Dear, why was there an incubator box shoved way deep in the garbage can? It was like it was hidden."
The guilty party: "An incubator box? I don't know anything about it."

A few weeks later.
SO "Dear, I am hearing peeping from the tool shed. Is there something that I should know?"

In a nutshell, that is chicken math.
We all start with a modest amount. And it grows. And grows. And when you want it to stop, they little buggers will hatch their own for you.

ETA:
I started with 8 little red sex link chicks. They were to go into their own little tractor and provide us with fresh eggs. I quickly learned that 8 cute little chicks can devastate the ground under a tractor in a couple of days. Hence came run #1. I then found some local Silver Sebrights (5) and White Rocks (5). Hence came run #2. White Rocks will go broody and so will my red sex links. Three weeks later another 13 chicks were bestowed upon us.

Then came the incubator.... I ended up with well over 100 at the peak. I had chicks and chickens in every nook and cranny that I could find.

 

[BrendaJ]

O yes chicken math

... starts with the fuzz butts - turns into chickens ( o yummy fresh eggs ) - then you go to a poultry swap "just to LOOK" lol - & incubator? what incubator do you speak of? & before you know it you have 1 2 3 4 5 o wait don't forget the ---- never mind I just have a couple chickens

 

[Bunnylady]

I think this thread pretty well covers the subject:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/472434/what-is-chicken-math

Any more questions?

 

[chickzndahood]

k thanks!

 

[conny63malies]

You order 20-30 eggs on Ebay because you want 5 pullets. My chicken math out of , lets say 20 shipped eggs half will hatch, thats 10. Out of 10 half are roos... Chicken math says buy more eggs

 

[oldrooster]

Or as a friend of mine his dad got out of the chicken biusnes and he had so many people hear he didn't have chickens anymore would re-home their extras or friends extras before 3 months went by he had over 130 chickens all breeds all ages both standard and bantam. And he never paid anything for them, people where even giving him used equipment because they wanted out of it because of financial or other reasons. I told my friend it sounded like butchering time and he needed to have a freezer cleaned out.

 

[ocap]

if you wanted to know how many square feet you need per chicken in your coop multiply length by width and divide by ten square feet needed for each hen or cock.
Chicken math comes into play when you decide to expand the size of your coop because your chicks are cute.
an acre is 209 feet by 209 feet and I have 41 acres so 209x209x41 divide by ten equals 179,092 chickens on the land that the bank and I own.
179,092 chickens are the most I can have without building a second story