How many chickens would you need to keep to supply all the meat and eggs your family eats?

[BY Bob]

I was planning on starting it right around Christmas time this year and posting every few weeks what's going on. I'm documenting everything from the chickens that I have crossed from my own flock to become meat chickens from weights and the amount of food they eat.

I should be getting my turkeys in March and the quail I will be doing them January. It'll be a fun process.

I'll even put the price of what it cost me to raise them and what it would have cost me to get it at the grocery store.

This will be very educational. I am glad you are doing this.

 

[NHMountainMan]

I was planning on starting it right around Christmas time this year and posting every few weeks what's going on. I'm documenting everything from the chickens that I have crossed from my own flock to become meat chickens from weights and the amount of food they eat.

I should be getting my turkeys in March and the quail I will be doing them January. It'll be a fun process.

I'll even put the price of what it cost me to raise them and what it would have cost me to get it at the grocery store.

It would be a great subject of an article!

 

[Mimi13]

I read a lot of posts where people say they keep chickens so they can supply meat and eggs for their families.

Take a family of four. I’m going to take an arbitrary minimum of one chicken per person per week as the point where one can still call oneself a regular eater of meat. This if managed right could supply roughly 4 servings of meat cuts per person per week, providing roughly 30 grams of protein per serving. You may be able to increase this by one more serving by making full use of the bird by making a broth/stew.

There are various estimates depending on size and body part for the amount of protein in a chicken.

I’ve taken 140 grams of protein per bird as a reasonable estimate if the entire chicken is eaten.

The recommended amount of protein per day for the average adult is 50/60 grams.

So eating one chicken per week per person will supply you with half your protein requirements for four days to five days.

So, for one person this amounts to 52 chickens a year to cover their meat consumption (only eating chicken meat reared at home).

For a family of four that’s 208 chickens per year.

If you are primarily a meat eater and you want to supply your own meat and make any realistic claims about not supporting the meat industry you could be looking at 400+ chickens a year just to provide half your protein requirements from chicken meat.

While it is possible to replace 400 chickens each year from say a hatchery the more ethical and sensible approach would be to have a self sustaining flock. This mean rooster and some stock to breed next years chickens from; say a minimum of a further 100 hens going broody each year and producing four chicks per hen, plus of course the roosters needed to fertilize the eggs.

That gives a flock size of roughly 500 chickens to supply a bit over half a families protein from meat requirement each year.

So, a question for those who claim they are keeping chickens to put meat on the table for their family.
How many chickens do you keep?

My view, the claims about providing for the family and not supporting the meat industry are self righteous delusional nonsense....unless of course you have 500 chickens.

Yes, every little helps but the above should show just how small a contribution a backyard flock of say ten chickens makes to the reduction of commercially produced chicken meat. Basically it’s insignificant.

There is a noticeable divide when discussions on BYC get a bit heated between those who say they view their chickens as pets and those who often try to take the higher ground by calling them livestock for providing food for the family.

The numbers say that for people like myself who kill and eat the occasional chicken; for me I think the average is five a year, the difference we make to the reduction of commercially produced meant and all the ethical debate surrounding it is in reality non existent.

It may be possible to supply a family of four with all the eggs they consume in a year with a small backyard flock.

An egg a day per person works out as 28 eggs every week 52 weeks of the year. That’s 1456 eggs a year. Each egg will give on average 6 grams of protein, roughly one tenth of your protein requirements per day. That’ s rougly 6 hens capable of laying 250 eggs per year, every year for their lifespan.

Assuming the above figures are reasonable then the claims that backyard chicken keeping has any impact on the large commercial production of eggs and meat looks unrealistic to put it politely.

This is great scientific, investigative work, Shad. I still don’t understand why some people would get defensive about stating they produce all their family’s protein supply.

After reading your figures above it seems quite illogical that a “diehard homesteader” (my name for one who lives completely off the land) could realistically keep that number of chickens for food. First of all, I don’t think those 400+ chickens could be provided a “proper” nutritional diet to be the healthiest they could be and provide the best nutritional carcass. And I don’t think that these 400+ chickens could be provided proper and adequate housing, leaving a certain percentage of them vulnerable to predation and their number exponentially short.

I am not a diehard homesteader by any stretch and so far have only used excess cock/erals for meat. (So far I have only had a total of 3 hens die: 2 euthanized, 1 found dead, and I was more concerned with what was going on inside them than I was with making a meal out of them. ) However, we do have deer on our land and will process one occasionally and put it in the freezer.

Unfortunately I guess my family would be termed to be on the gluttonous side because I’m not sure one chicken would provide each member food for a week. When the food tastes good we just like to eat.

I am going to assume eek:not a smart thing, I know) that people who raise chickens to feed their families most likely also raise beef, pork, etc. to supplement their nutritional needs.

Of course all this is just from my pea-brain way of thinking and I thought I’d share a pea or two.

 

[aart]

Look like I need to build a MUCH bigger coop!

...and a bigger freezer, unless you plan on slaughtering as you need.

I have chickens for food, eggs and meat(old layers, extra hatched cockerels)...
...but was never intended to be my only protein sources.

 

[NHMountainMan]

...and a bigger freezer, unless you plan on slaughtering as you need.

I have chickens for food, eggs and meat(old layers, extra hatched cockerels)...
...but was never intended to be my only protein sources.

I'm thinking 10 every few weeks - with staggered deliveries of chucks - though I really want to figure out the self sustaining - but that's way above my present experience and skill set!

 

[jolenesdad]

This is great scientific, investigative work, Shad. I still don’t understand why some people would get defensive about stating they produce all their family’s protein supply.

After reading your figures above it seems quite illogical that a “diehard homesteader” (my name for one who lives completely off the land) could realistically keep that number of chickens for food. First of all, I don’t think those 400+ chickens could be provided a “proper” nutritional diet to be the healthiest they could be and provide the best nutritional carcass. And I don’t think that these 400+ chickens could be provided proper and adequate housing, leaving a certain percentage of them vulnerable to predation and their number exponentially short.

I am not a diehard homesteader by any stretch and so far have only used excess cock/erals for meat. (So far I have only had a total of 3 hens die: 2 euthanized, 1 found dead, and I was more concerned with what was going on inside them than I was with making a meal out of them. ) However, we do have deer on our land and will process one occasionally and put it in the freezer.

Unfortunately I guess my family would be termed to be on the gluttonous side because I’m not sure one chicken would provide each member food for a week. When the food tastes good we just like to eat.

I am going to assume eek:not a smart thing, I know) that people who raise chickens to feed their families most likely also raise beef, pork, etc. to supplement their nutritional needs.

Of course all this is just from my pea-brain way of thinking and I thought I’d share a pea or two.

Those 400 chickens wouldn’t be alive at once.... I’d imagine 4 months at most. You could either do 150 at a time, 3 times a year, or hatch 40-50 a month. My meat birds, 40-50 at a time, are fine with 3 feet of space overnight in their coop, and I let them range during the day.

once again it all changes if you use broilers. It also all changes if you have a cow for your protein too.

I still think it’s pretty possible.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Assuming the above figures are reasonable then the claims that backyard chicken keeping has any impact on the large commercial production of eggs and meat looks unrealistic to put it politely.

I've never put myself as trying to have an impact on the commercial chicken industry. That is not one of my claims.

Try changing three of your assumptions and rerun the numbers.

1) Eat your pullets

2) Use an incubator to hatch them and brood them yourself.

3) My broody hens typically raise 8 to 9 per hatch. Some more, some less, but if you use an incubator you don't need broody hens at all.

My typical laying breeding flock is one rooster and 6 to 8 hens. We eat about 45 chickens a year, one a week except when we are eating somewhere else on Thursdays, our first chicken night. The leftovers from Thursday go into soup on Saturday if it is a pullet. If it's a cockerel I get an additional lunch or two out of it. I hatch about half of these with my incubator and used broody hens to hatch and raise the rest.

Shadrach I didn't even notice it was you until I went back to quote the OP. I'm a retired engineer and worked with numbers and assumptions all my working life. So I'll rerun some numbers with different assumptions. Assumptions I find pretty reasonable. I'll use your 208 chickens a year.

Assume one hen lays 150 eggs or year. Many exceed this, especially production breeds. Use incubators and set a new brood every week. A week is a good storage length for hatching eggs. Using one incubator to incubate and one as a hatcher you could achieve this with just two incubators. Some people on this forum do that with two incubators, set eggs every week. The limitation would be brooders. Assume a 70% hatch rate for incubated eggs and raising them to butcher age. Many people exceed 70% on average. I do. 70% of 150 eggs equals 105 chicks a year.

So two hens and one rooster could give you over 208 chickens a year.

That shows the power of assumptions and why I'm really skeptical of advertisements I see and political claims I hear. Just by changing the assumptions you can make many numbers say what you want them to.

 

[NHMountainMan]

Those 400 chickens wouldn’t be alive at once.... I’d imagine 4 months at most. You could either do 150 at a time, 3 times a year, or hatch 40-50 a month. My meat birds, 40-50 at a time, are fine with 3 feet of space overnight in their coop, and I let them range during the day.

once again it all changes if you use broilers. It also all changes if you have a cow for your protein too.

I still think it’s pretty possible.

When your day meat birds so your man Cornish cross?

 

[jolenesdad]

When your day meat birds so your man Cornish cross?

Right now I have half heritage (Delawares) and half hybrid meat broilers for our winter food.

I don’t do Cornish cross, but yes, they’re commercial meat hybrids.

 

[NHMountainMan]

I've never put myself as trying to have an impact on the commercial chicken industry. That is not one of my claims.

Try changing three of your assumptions and rerun the numbers.

1) Eat your pullets

2) Use an incubator to hatch them and brood them yourself.

3) My broody hens typically raise 8 to 9 per hatch. Some more, some less, but if you use an incubator you don't need broody hens at all.

My typical laying breeding flock is one rooster and 6 to 8 hens. We eat about 45 chickens a year, one a week except when we are eating somewhere else on Thursdays, our first chicken night. The leftovers from Thursday go into soup on Saturday if it is a pullet. If it's a cockerel I get an additional lunch or two out of it. I hatch about half of these with my incubator and used broody hens to hatch and raise the rest.

Shadrach I didn't even notice it was you until I went back to quote the OP. I'm a retired engineer and worked with numbers and assumptions all my working life. So I'll rerun some numbers with different assumptions. Assumptions I find pretty reasonable. I'll use your 208 chickens a year.

Assume one hen lays 150 eggs or year. Many exceed this, especially production breeds. Use incubators and set a new brood every week. A week is a good storage length for hatching eggs. Using one incubator to incubate and one as a hatcher you could achieve this with just two incubators. Some people on this forum do that with two incubators, set eggs every week. The limitation would be brooders. Assume a 70% hatch rate for incubated eggs and raising them to butcher age. Many people exceed 70% on average. I do. 70% of 150 eggs equals 105 chicks a year.

So two hens and one rooster could give you over 208 chickens a year.

That shows the power of assumptions and why I'm really skeptical of advertisements I see and political claims I hear. Just by changing the assumptions you can make many numbers say what you want them to.

I'm 100% with you in how to interpret numbers. I'm a retired Economist, and tend to work numbers in my head all the time...
I don't have any experience and look towards you, @Shadrach and many many others to help me build my plan. Looking forward to folliwing this thread.