How many chickens are there in the world?
National agriculture ministries report livestock inventories to the FAO, and the chicken total sits at roughly 26 billion birds alive at any one time — more than three per living human, and more than any other bird species on Earth by a factor of twenty. The figure understates throughput badly: because a broiler chicken is slaughtered at about six weeks, roughly 74 billion are killed each year against a standing population of 26 billion. Chickens make up around 70% of all bird biomass on the planet.
How the figure is arrived at
Livestock censuses, not sampling. Farms report inventories to national statistical offices, which report to the FAO. Standing population and annual slaughter are separate lines in the same tables — conflating them is the usual way this number is misquoted by a factor of three.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 24,000,000,000
- High estimate
- 28,000,000,000
- Spread
- 1.2× between the bounds
Other living things and the natural world counts
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many fish are there in the sea? somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows
- How many species are endangered? more than 45,000 assessed as threatened
- How many bees are there in the world? roughly 2 trillion managed honey bees
- How many birds are there in the world? about 50 billion wild birds
- How many bacteria are there on Earth? about 5 nonillion
- How many earthquakes are there each year? about 20,000 located a year — around 55 a day
Common questions
- How many chickens are there in the world?
- about 26 billion alive at any moment
- How is that estimated?
- Livestock censuses, not sampling. Farms report inventories to national statistical offices, which report to the FAO. Standing population and annual slaughter are separate lines in the same tables — conflating them is the usual way this number is misquoted by a factor of three.
Related pages
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many countries are there in the world? Things people built
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many stars are there in the Milky Way? Space and the universe
- How many atoms are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many galaxies are there? Space and the universe
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place