In episode 5 of Survivor 49 we saw another instance of a tribe winning a rooster and three egg laying hens. The conversation went straight to let’s kill it and eat it. Maybe there was more talk about farming the eggs, but it was mostly “I want to eat it but don’t want to kill it”.
Admittedly, as far as I know they didn’t kill any of the egg laying hens. Hopefully, they intend to keep them because, chickens have an amazing ability to produce about 7g of protien per day. They eat all the bugs and things that you don’t want to eat, and they turn it into a delicious egg.
I don’t recall any time in Survivor where the tribe won egg laying chickens and they didn’t immediately resort to killing it. Please let me know if there was such a season, though.
Anyway, the obvious strategy is to keep the chickens, eat their eggs, and slaughter them near the endgame. I was curious to know how many extra calories this would give each player.
I’m also going to throw an outside-the-box idea.
The strategies
The objective is to maximise the number of calories produced from the chickens for the duration of time on the island per person.
I’ll compare two strategies:
- Farm: Farm the eggs from the three hens until the final 5. Slaughter and eat the rooster and the three hens at final 5.
- Slaughter: Slaughter and eat one chicken per day, starting with the rooster.
The only interesting part here is how many calories each person gets from the eggs once divided up. As the game goes on, people get voted and therefore less mouths to feed. That part requires a little bit maths.
Some players won’t make the final 5, of course, but from a game theory point of view, each player is playing to win and in the process make the final 5. You have to plan for that scenario.
Assumptions
I’ll use the following assumptions:
- 160g of protein and 1200 calories per 1kg of chicken (source: Google)
- A medium-sized Welsummer chicken is 2250g, 75% of it’s live weight once slaughtered (Source: Google)
- An average egg has 7g of protein and 82 calories (Source: Google)
- The chickens lay one egg each morning (Source: Direct observation from my own chickens; Google)
- Eggs are consumed in the morning
- The chickens were won on day 10 (as per S49), merge at day 14, and final 5 at day 24
- The tribe loses one more person before merge.
- The eggs are eaten the morning of merge.
Results
Here are the results:
| Strategy | Protein (per person) (g) | Calories (per person) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Farm | 203 | 2104 |
| 2 | Slaughter | 167 | 1326 |
You can find the finer details of the calculations in this Google Sheets.
Saving the chickens until the final 5 will give a player who makes the final 5 an extra 778 calories. That’s about 600g of cooked rice.
Yeah, I’m sure it’s not as easy as that when you’re starving. I recommend watching Alone, you can last a lot longer than you think.
And Steven was wrong, it’s definitely not an anti-reward!
Here’s an outside-the-box idea
What I would love to see is a tribe that turns eggs into currency. Here’s the idea:
- The tribe has a randomly drawn roster that is fixed.
- The first 3 players on the list get an egg each
- They can decide what they do with the egg. They could eat it themselves, share it, give it to someone else, or save it.
- The next day the next 3 players on the list get an egg each.
The eggs in people’s possession could then be used for favours, building trust, etc.
Possible scenarios:
- Two people really want to go on a journey. One player may offer the other player an egg if they get to go on the journey.
- Two players are the last in an endurance based individual immunity challenge. One player may offer up their eggs in exchange for winning immunity
- A player may offer their eggs in exchange for voting a certain way or for information.
I’d actually love to see this, and I’d love for the very first challenge of the season to reward the first two tribes 4 chickens and 2 chickens respectively. This will allow both tribes to build some egg wealth. The players on the losing tribe that make it to merge could be enticed by delicious eggs.
I actually need to see this now.
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