I've Always Been Bad At Math But I Sure Am Good At Chicken Math

Chicken Math...what a silly term.  Unless you have chickens. Then you have or will be hit with Chicken Math. I am horrible at math, always have been.  God bless my momma, she got me through all my math classes in school. The only math I excel at is Chicken Math. 

I will try to explain it as best I can. We will start with using myself as an example:  

I was only going to have a small pack.  3-4 chickens. End of 2020 we had 6.  End of 2021 we had 15.  End of 2022 we had 25. End of 2023 we had 30 hens, 1 rooster, and 3 ducks. Since 2020 I have expanded a lot. We have lost a few along the way.  And in my eyes if you lose one, you replace it with at least two or three more. My hubby absolutely hates that part of chicken math.  

You know around Halloween when your kids get their candy and have those teeny tiny candy bars?  You pop a small Twix or Milky Way in your mouth (don't judge those are my favorite) and you just keep eating them?  Because one was good, why not another?  Then another.  Suddenly you have eaten 5 of them and your head is swimming from the sugar rush. That is kind of like owning chickens.  I have three, they are so fun what would it hurt to have one or two more?  Oh look at that pretty breed, I'll just get two. Well so and so said -insert breed- lays very well, I should get a couple. My hen is broody, I should let her sit on a few eggs and have chicks! Suddenly all hell has broken loose and you have 30 chickens roaming around begging you for treats and your head is swimming from trying to keep up with an army of tiny tyrannosaurus rexes. Yeah. That is chicken math.  

Chicken math also means that numbers no longer exist in your world as they do in the real life.  In chicken world, three chickens really only means one.  Forty chickens, that really only means twenty.  Don't ask me how it works or who invented the rules.  It's like fight club.  We don't talk about it.  Just know as a chicken keeper, the way you did math before will be completely different than how you do it now. 

We went from our small coop and run to converting our three sided pole barn into a chicken coop with runs coming off of it.  And I am always thinking of ways to expand because I just want more chickens. I will never not want more chickens.  The McMurray hatchery 2024 catalogue came in the mail the other day and I was reading it cover to cover, earmarking pages with breeds I want.  Research I was calling it.  However my hubby didn't see it that way...he threatened to hide it for a few months until it was warm enough to get chicks.  I promised I would wait until my birthday for chicks.  Or at the very earliest end of February.  Let's be honest, if I make it until Valentines Day we will be doing good. 

And don't forget that chickens are not only an addiction they are a gateway drug. To other farm animals.  At the end of 2022 we debated on what kind of animal to add. Ok when I say we, I mean I...I debated and Lloyd had no choice but to listen.  We had spent some time with a lone Canada Goose on our farm for a month or so in early 2022 and I loved having her follow me around and felt my Chick Packs were safer with her sleeping near the coops.  So we, there I go again I mean I, was debating on a couple goslings or ducklings. Seeing as our original chicken coop is a bit on the shorter and squatter side, we decided to go with ducklings.  I will most definitely have a post about my Duck Nuggets at a later date.  I also know that since chickens are a gateway drug, I will end up with another species of poultry or waterfowl soon. I was just telling my coworker DeEsta that a pair of geese roaming the yard would be fantastic.

So your lesson from this crazy chicken lady (and I always share this to the newbie chicken owners on the chicken Facebook pages) prepare for more chickens than you have and think you want right now. Go for the bigger run, build a bigger coop.  You will end up with more.  Chicken math hits everyone eventually. You may say- only 3 or 4- but you are going to end up with a lot more than that. I can guarantee you. Like me, you could be really bad at math but excel at chicken math.  And that is okay.  There are worse problems to have.