Also, you can never count your chickens before they hatch, so really eggs in general are irrelevant towards flock count… right? When those extras do indeed hatch, if kept, they do not count against your flock count because as shown in the equation above they sum to zero. We all know that hatching rates are almost never 100%, therefore it is absolutely acceptable to make the assumption that extra eggs above and beyond your intended flock increase will not properly gestate or can be given away to chicken friends. Proof #8: Replacements for Predated Chickens Only Count as ½ Chicken Practical / Situational Application of Proof 7: “Yes sweetie I hear all three of them crowing in unison at 4am but I’m sure one of them will be eaten sooner or later.” (Note: after delivering this statement roll over in bed and go back to sleep, the message will be burnt into your partner’s subconscious and should not be an issue going forward). Additionally, my findings show that Roosters are cycled much more often than hens, so it only makes sense that this third position is a revolving door of sorts, and thus the third Rooster does not count towards flock totals. It’s hard to give them all away and sometimes there’s one that just has the most interesting little attitude that you can’t part with (at least not yet).

However, during incubation periods we know that roughly half of all eggs are male, and thus we get a lot of extra cockerels. Both of these Roosters count towards flock count. Most free-ranging flocks will be accompanied by a Rooster, possibly a second as a back-up depending on the flock size. Proof #5: Gifted and Rescued Chickens Do Not Count Practical / Situational Application of Proof 4: “Sweetheart, I understand we have 3 goats, 2 dogs and a llama, but those animals are irrelevant when determining my flock size and I really do need another Silkie.” (Note: you could attempt to further negotiate by explaining how a silkie is also only half a chicken as proven earlier, but use this tactic at your discretion). PS- Goats just eat and don’t lay eggs = kinda worthless anyway. Keep this in mind as you consider that “super cute baby goat”. On a scholastic note, the larger the overall animal-count becomes though the more difficult justification for additional chickens becomes. This proof includes (but is not limited to): dogs, cats, goats, horses, donkeys, sheep, cows, pigs, llamas, rabbits, small and large humans.

It is regularly observed that non-chickens are included in flock calculations, sometimes even incorporating small humans in the counts this approach is proved false by the calculation above. Though rudimentary, it is important to note that non-Chicken animals do not count towards the flock size.

Proof #3: Bantams and Silkies Count as ½ Chicken (Note: historically this discussion is better received by the non-chicken-math-side of the family if the two breeds in question look much different… think Black Australorp vs Columbian Wyandotte). Practical, Situational Application of Proof 2: “Honestly my love, the differences in a Rhode Island Red and a Golden Comet are so stark that I could hardly count that new hen against my total flock size”. An important note here is that breed is not mutually exclusive to egg color meaning if you have two Brown Egg Layers of the same Breed, this still counts as 1 Chicken (not 0 because these chickens are mathematically identical and one chicken counts for both the breed and the egg color) however, if you have two brown egg layers from two different breeds, this does indeed count as 0 additional chickens towards the flock count. It did not take long to realize that like egg color: the first of each kind of chicken breed was also not applicable towards flock size. Given the egg-color findings as outlined above, it occurred to me that there was likely correlation but not necessarily causation in the variation of the chicken breeds on flock size.

Chicken math image