Chickens do not eat in the dark. That’s why the light in stables for intensively reared chicken is on way longer than the sun is up (I’m not up to date on what’s considered optimal today, but I think 24 hours a day was abandoned because it caused too much stress (and stress harms growth, or even kills chicken) for weird things such as “40 minutes on, 20 minutes off”)
Some of the large factors that affect production costs are feeding the chicken and e.g. capital costs of the stable, but optimizing production per dollar more or less boils down to getting the “feed conversion ratio” down.
Some of the large factors that affect production costs are feeding the chicken and e.g. capital costs of the stable, but optimizing production per dollar more or less boils down to getting the “feed conversion ratio” down.
It is about 1,6 for intensively reared chicken in the USA, meaning they have to eat 1,6 kg of food to gain a kilogram of weight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Poultry)
For comparison, you need two kg of feed to get a kg of eggs, so eggs are about 20% more expensive per kg than chicken meat.
You can’t keep chicken that grow that fast to an age of 80 days, as they would break their legs from excessive weight.
Free range chicken are different breeds that have a higher FCR.