Chicken Math: Here’s How to Actually Do It
by 
Do you keep chickens? Do you want to keep chickens? If you answered ‘yes’ to either of these questions you probably already know that this is one endeavor that is highly likely to get out of control.
No one seems to know why this happens: One day you come home with a starter flock of six chickens and the next thing you know you’ve got 20, then 50, now 100 or even more chickens running around all over the place. How does this happen?!
I’ll tell you how it happens: it’s from a lack of planning, and specifically it happens to chicken keepers that don’t take the time to learn Chicken Math™.
You’ve probably heard of the concept before even if you aren’t familiar with it, and though it’s sometimes treated humorously, it’s actually really serious business.
If you want to keep a handle on your flock and also keep control of your life, you’ll need to learn it, and the time has come. Let’s go!
What Does Chicken Math Mean?
Chicken math is really simple. Chicken math is nothing more than a proprietary and intricate method of assigning values to your chickens so that you can precisely calculate and manage the size of your flock and your additions to it. That’s it.
If it sounds simple to you, that’s because it really is. Even a child can learn chicken math, but when it comes to managing your flock’s new additions, losses and other acquisitions it can get surprisingly sophisticated.
Don’t be intimidated, I promise you’ll have a handle on it in no time…
Why Do You Need to Know Chicken Math at All?
One of the major obstacles to learning chicken math you must first overcome is your own incredulousness.
How hard can it be to just perform a head count on your flock to know how many chickens you have?
See, that’s mistake number one: A simple headcount seems satisfactory to the uninitiated, but it’s really anything but, because it doesn’t take into account the productivity or actual value of any given chicken according to the standards of chicken math.
Only by properly performing chicken math calculations with your flock, and with incoming additions, will you be able to crunch the numbers and arrive at usable data.
It will all make sense in the following sections, but if you understand the premise for now, keep reading.
How Do You Number Chickens?
Numbering your chickens, or rather assigning them a value, couldn’t be simpler.
Mature, adult chickens count as 1. That’s really all there is to it. Chicks should be assigned a value of 0 for reasons we will discuss.
Eggs, any egg, are always 0. It doesn’t matter if they are only minutes away from hatching or freshly laid. Eggs are zero, end of story.
You can already see where this varies somewhat from a simple head count. Adult chickens are counted, chicks and eggs are not. What a difference that makes!
If you have 10 adult chickens and 16 chicks with another 9 eggs in the incubator, you have a strict headcount of 35! Sheesh, that’s a big number! How did it get this bad?
Anyway, the good news is according to my chicken math, the correct math, you have only 10 adult chickens which count as 10; 16 chicks which have a net value of 0; and 9 eggs with another total value of 0.
Hence, just 10 chickens. That’s a nice, sane, easily explained number.
Tom has lived and worked on farms and homesteads from the Carolinas to Kentucky and beyond. He is passionate about helping people prepare for tough times by embracing lifestyles of self-sufficiency.
