[Floyd]

I am suffering from a complete mental block on how to calculate how much food I would require to raise table birds, to see if it is financially viable for home production.

If I had 30 birds with a final kill weight of 2.5 kG, how would I calculate the amount of feed required?

The link below shows Feed conversion ratios for a Sasso breed (Couldn't work out how to cut and paste from the web page) but it could be written in Latin for all it means to me.

http://http://www.smart-chicks.co.uk/rates.html

I may be making it more difficult than it needs to be, any help greatly appreciated.

[Womble]

Wow, talk about confusing - even with a degree in engineering, that table still had me scratching my head!
 
However, I think I've managed to make sense of it for you.  Taking the figures in the last row of the table:
 
70 days old
2531g = The average live weight of a chicken
2.53 = FCR = Feed conversion ratio, i.e. your average chicken has consumed 2531 x 2.53 = 6.4 kg of food to get to that weight.
2797g = The average live weight of the cockerels
2265g = The average live weight of the hens
 
So, if you had 30 birds and were aiming for a final kill weight of 2.5kg at 10 weeks old, you would need roughly 2531 x 2.53 x 30 = 192 kg of feed. If you assumed they were on chick crumbs for the first month, by my reckoning that means you'd need to buy 32.5 kg of chick crumb (so say two sacks), plus 160 kg of grower/finishers (say 8 sacks).
 
So, I hope that's firstly correct ( ), and secondly helpful. However, I'm quite sure the hubbards we had last year ate a lot more than that to get to 2.5kg, so I'd take those figures with a pinch of salt. There's quite a bit of similar info here on what one might expect in a typical smallholder situation which might help you out though?
 
Good luck! 

[Womble]

Just a thought regarding the costs, I asked the same question a few weeks ago, and the answer from Andrew was 10kg of food each for Hubbards, at a cost of a bit over a fiver each at the best prices I could get locally a few weeks ago.
 
From the charts you posted above, the cost would work out at £3.23 per bird on average, killed at 70 days old.
 
I'm now wondering where we went wrong last year, since I'm sure we ended up paying at least twice that to feed ours!  Can anybody else shed any light?

[Derby_menagerie]

Here Something from the farmgate site http://www.farmgatefeeds.co.uk/media/Farmgate/Case%20Studies/Chicken%20Comings%20&%20Goings.pdf Obviously it is geared towards their feed range but the feed levels should be broadly similiar if the same protein percentage feeds are used.

[the great composto]

I saw the calculation like this....

ie up to 21 weeks the conversion rate is 1.4 but for the next 7 days they add 240g with a FCR of 1.62.

I make it a tad over 5kg of food per cockerel to get to 70 days.

[Floyd]

Thanks guys,

Your information has been greatly received.  At least I dont feel so bad about not understanding it.