Meat Chickens

I guess would depend on how many chickens you'd be running, soil type, fertility … etc. Sorry mate, but there can never be any set answer. Grown in succession you could manage year round feed for them. Grains, though, can be grown intensively (like my oat crop) so you can jam a lot of crop into a small area IF the land can support it. No good burning your soil out in the process. Lucerne (alfalfa) and clover can all be grown as a lawn or pasture so you can get the chickens onto a salad bar so to speak. Sometimes we grow their feed right in their run bit put close knit wire netting about three inches or so above the ground level; the chickens can eat the tops without destroying the plant itself and the plant just keep coming through (and the chooks add fertility by pooping through the wire!).

I would have thought for chooks, ducks and maybe a goat or 3 a 1/4 acre of corn and another 1/4 acre of oats/barley wiukd be sufficient?

I am trying to find more info on yields per acre etc but it all seems to be oreientated towards broad acre farming

Just got an email from prepper so journal. Again they point to chooks as a great back up. I have to say that there is so much more to self sufficiency with chooks and eggs. In an earlier thread I mentioned so of the logistics of meat chooks. How many you need etc.
It must be front and centre of the thinking that commercial egg laying breeds do not go clucky and sit on eggs, in my experience ever ever ever. They lay fantastic for about a year and then they slow down to normal breed rates and die at about 2 year plus. Some will live longer but my point is without an incubator and electricity you will starve if that is your whole plan.
My current situation is only slightly better. I have a utility breed (Wyandotte) that occasionally go clucky. Fingers crossed I will have some meat birds that also are reasonable layers (Sussex) plus now ducks (Pekin) that lay very well and are quite tasty and quick growing. This is all of little value if I cannot incubate the egg on demand.
There are chooks that are almost always clucky and I will have to get that sorted to consider eggs and chicken as a sustainable food source.
I suppose this reiterates the bleeding obvious.... Practise practise now while mistakes only cost time and a little embarrassment.


But if you put 4 chooks in your back yard you will at least have a supply of egg while you work out the rest

I might be able to assist in this area with some knowledge and or birds if your still after such.

I am a bit of a mad scientist in this field tbh and have been working on selective breeding a dual purpose bird that goes clucky, lays eggs prolifically, puts on weight up to 16 weeks quite well, is drought tolerant and free ranging.

I can drop my feed bill by at least 4/5ths through mainly compost. Ive learned a lot over the years about chooks, and not there yet, but every year im getting better and my birds are too.

Where in Vic are you mate?