How many meat chickens should I raise?
Short answer
12–25 per person
A person eating chicken once a week wants about 25 birds a year; once a fortnight, 12. A family of four that eats chicken weekly is looking at 100 birds — which is why most homesteaders run two or three batches of 25–50 rather than one enormous brood.
The arithmetic
- A Cornish Cross processed at 8 weeks dresses out around 5 lbs (University of Maryland's budget assumption).
- One bird is roughly two dinners plus stock for a family of four.
- Chicken once a week = 52 meals ÷ 2 meals per bird = 26 birds per year for that family… but a 5-lb bird feeds four generously, so figure closer to 50 birds for a family eating chicken weekly.
- Order 10% extra. Maryland's small-flock budget assumes 10% mortality, and that's with experience.
How much feed it takes — the number most often quoted wrong
Feed is the whole economics of meat birds, and the most-cited figure in circulation has a qualifier attached that usually gets dropped.
- University of Maryland
- 2.2 lbs feed per lb of DRESSED weight
- University of Minnesota
- ~5 lbs of feed to 6 weeks; 8–9 lbs to 8 weeks
- Derived from UMD, live basis
- ~1.6–1.8 lbs feed per lb live weight
Maryland's 2.2 is explicitly on a dressed-weight basis. It gets repeated across the internet as a live-weight feed conversion ratio, which makes birds look considerably hungrier than they are. Minnesota's 8–9 lbs to eight weeks implies a slightly smaller bird than Maryland's 8-week/5-lb-dressed assumption — both are Cornish Cross, and the gap is mostly feed wastage and pasture versus confinement.
Budget 9–11 lbs of feed per bird to a 6 lb live weight. At $22 for a 50-lb bag that's roughly $4.40 in feed per bird before chicks, bedding, and processing.
What changes your number
- Breed. Cornish Cross hit weight in 6–8 weeks. Slower-growing heritage and Ranger-type birds take 11–14 weeks and eat considerably more feed for the same carcass — you're buying flavor and foraging ability, not efficiency.
- Processing weight. Minnesota puts market carcass weight at 4–6 lbs from 6–8 weeks. Every extra week adds feed cost faster than it adds meat.
- Batch size. Brooder space, freezer space, and one long processing day all scale together. Most people find 25–50 per batch is the limit of a single day's work.
- Freezer. Fifty dressed birds at 5 lbs is 250 lbs of chicken. Check you have room before you order chicks.
What you actually get back
| Species | Dressing percentage | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Broiler chicken | 70–75% of live weight | Minnesota / Michigan State |
| Turkey | 77–81% | Michigan State |
| Meat rabbit | 55–60% | Mississippi State |
| Pig | 70–73% hanging; ~48–52% packaged | Maine / Minnesota |
| Beef steer | ~62% hanging; ~40% packaged | Michigan State / Mississippi State |
Minnesota's own two publications disagree slightly on chicken — one says 70–75% ready-to-cook, another implies 75–83% for a whole bird. Michigan State's 71% sits inside the lower range, so 70–75% is the defensible figure. Note the difference between hanging weight and what actually goes in your freezer: for pigs and beef the gap between the two is large, and it's where most first-timers get surprised.
What it costs
Feed is the dominant cost and it's knowable in advance: 9–11 lbs per bird. Add chicks, bedding, and processing — whether you do it yourself or pay a locker — and you have your real cost per pound. Maryland's small-flock budget is the best public template for running these numbers honestly, including the 10% mortality nobody plans for.
What to do with the surplus
Fifty birds arriving in the freezer on one October afternoon is a storage problem before it's a dinner problem. Freezer space is the constraint most people discover too late — figure roughly 1 cubic foot per 30 lbs.
Then stop planning from averages
Homestead Paradise tracks a batch from chick order to freezer — feed bought, losses, processing day, cost per pound — so your second batch is planned from your first batch's real numbers.
Start free — no cardKeep planning
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from a land-grant university extension service, the USDA, or a breed registry — never from another blog.