Chicken Math: How 5 chickens turned into 40

Chickens were supposed to be the one thing I planned out and did the right way. It was January 2023, I had a small coop that a friend of my husband had given us. I planned out the size of the run and calculated exactly how many chickens I could fit in the small coop. 5 hens would be more than enough to supply us with the eggs we need. I decided I didn't want any roosters because I didn't want to end up with baby chicks later. My plan was, once spring came I would build the run around the coop, find a few chickens for sale locally, and then I would have my small chicken flock complete. Boy was I wrong.

It's important to give a short chicken vocabulary lesson here. There were lots of words that I didn't understand when I started my chicken journey.

• Straight-run/Unsexed: This means the chicks are not sexed. They're a mix of male and female.

• Sexed: This means some great people have used their expertise in the internal anatomy of chicks and have determined whether they are male or female. This method is called vent sexing and is about 90% accurate but should only be performed by a professional.

• Pullet: A young female chicken.

• Cockerel: A young male chicken.

• Hen: An adult female chicken that has started laying eggs.

• Rooster: An adult male chicken that has reached sexual maturity.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's proceed.

Beginning of Jan 2023: I talked to my friend who was also planning on getting chickens and realized there were tons of different breeds and pros and cons for them. After that, I began researching breeds and found Hoover's Hatchery. Most online hatcheries have order minimums for the safe shipping of the birds. This particular hatchery had a minimum of 15 with a breed minimum of 5. That meant I needed to buy 5 of each breed I wanted. I ended up ordering 20 chicks from them, 5 females each Midnight Mystic Marans, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Speckled Sussex, and Prairie Bluebell Eggers. They were due to ship at the beginning of March so I still had plenty of time to get everything set up for them. In my mind, I was going to keep 5 of these 20 chicks and resale the rest.

Beginning of February 2023: My friend found a pet store in a neighboring county selling chicks for $1 each (in my limited chicken knowledge I didn't realize this was a red flag). I went with her when she was buying them... I came home with 15 straight-run chicks. Now at this point, it is worth mentioning that some people swear there are ways to tell if a chick is male or female without vent sexing. You can look at wings, legs, and tail feathers and possibly be able to determine sex. I could not do this. And my friend and I asked the people selling the chicks if they could do it and they said that those methods are not accurate at all so they only sell straight-run. Of those 15 chicks, one turned out to be a pullet and I had 14 cockerels to figure out what to do with. My friend bought 20 and also only ended up with one pullet. We assume they had in fact sexed the chicks and had sold the pullets at a premium price and then needed to get rid of the cockerels so they sold them as $1 straight-run chicks.

This began my "chicken math" problem.

Middle of February 2023: At this point, I had 15 chicks on my dining room floor in a dog kennel with the heat lamp, feeder, and waterer that were included in the Beginner Poultry Kit I bought from Tractor Supply on my way home with the chicks. Luckily between my husband and I, we were able to build a decent-sized brooder out of pallets. But we now had the problem of the chicken coop I had planned to use was too small for the 15 chicks I currently had and the 20 that would be coming in March.

Beginning of March 2023: We sectioned the brooder into 2 parts. One for the bigger chicks and one for the smaller ones, since chicks of different sizes can't really be together because the bigger ones will kill the smaller ones. We finally decided that building a chicken coop was going to be cheaper than buying one because I had a specific design in mind. While we set to work on the coop, I was still telling myself that I was going to get rid of most of the chickens. Definitely all the roosters.

End of March 2023: Chicken coop is done! And I just happened to be at Tractor Supply buying chicken feed and they had chicks of course. I ended up coming home with 5 (there's that order minimum) Rainbow chicks. What's a rainbow chick you ask? Well, I don't know either but they were cute! Chicken math had taken over and what was supposed to be just 5 chickens turned into 40.

Sometime in April 2023 (I've lost track at this point): I did finally get rid of 13 out of the 14 cockerels. I gave them away because at the time I didn't have the heart to cull them myself. And I end up giving my sister a lot of the pullets. I ended up with 14 pullets and 1 cockerel and was happy with that amount. I was getting more eggs than I could use myself so I was able to supply my family and friends with eggs also.

November 2024 (Current Day): I have 24 hens and 2 roosters now. I've made my run area bigger for the bigger flock and I 100% plan on getting more this spring. I am in my "colored egg" era. I want ALL the colors of eggs so I need more chickens! The moral of this story is always plan for more chickens than you originally thought you wanted.