>>1549475Some will be egg layers. Extra eggs will be sold. Since I was unable to acquire other specific poultry breeds, I am hatching lots of ducks to make up for that. I'm doing my best to be a subsistence farmer and growing/raising as much of what is in my diet as possible. Nearly for the past year, until I had some hamburger yesterday, I'd been eating chicken I raised earlier in the season and fish I catch from my pond and river section as my only meat sources.
One thing is that there are always failures. Right now with Batch 3 there has been a 50% successful-pip rate and 37.5% successful-hatch rate. Hopefully, all that pip will hatch, there's still 4 of those. 50% success rate is terrible really. That's out of 32 eggs. So, lets say that 50% is what I end up getting. That's only 16 ducks. Then they need to grow up for 7 weeks before I weigh them and band their legs to keep track of their stats. Then I'll wait until they mature so their voices change and I can tell which is male & female and which to butcher, keep for eggs, and keep for breeding stock. That's about 7-9 weeks where predators are constantly trying to get to them and eat them. I haven't lost any to predators...yet, but I've caught snakes and raccoons right next to the outdoor pens and even had a black snake enter the building through a 2nd story window because it could hear the ducklings peeping. No hawk attacks yet, but all the runs have tops anyway. So, the threat of loss of livestock and the need for breeders/egg layers requires me to raise more than I actually would otherwise need.
The same goes for vegetables. "Grow some for yourself, some for the birds, and some for seed next season."