When the scientists (ecologists, anthropologists, agri-geeks, whatever) who study ranchers or pastoral peoples and their herds talk about animals, it helps to have a way to collapse different species into a common value. Typically, a cow is taken as the base unit, and other animals are given a value that’s some subset of a cow. This is called a Livestock Unit (LSU). For sub-saharan Africa, the FAO Compendium of Agricultural – Environmental Indicators sets the value of a goat at 0.1 LSU. A duck is less than a third of that (0.03 LSU) while a chicken clucks clocks in at a tenth (0.01 LSU).
I was thinking about this today when my mom sent out an email with our World Vision Christmas goat/duck/chicken donation plan details. The extended family pooled our money, making it mathematically ambiguous to say which participant purchased how many of each animal. To make things tricksier, the absolute cost for certain animals (hello expensive goats!) were greater than a single present-share, leading to mandatory fractional stewardship.
In addition to the previous LSU ratio mentioned (which I’ll scale to 100:30:10) we also have a cost ratio from World Vision, which can be similarly scaled to 100:8:16.67. Notice the duck/chicken value is inverted from the LSU values. If we collapse within species, we get a ratio of LSU/cost ratios – specifically, 1:3.75:0.6. In other words, the highest LSU/cost “bang for your buck” comes from ducks while chickens on the other hand are a relative ripoff.
So, in my optimal self-centered world, I’d straight-up maximize my share of the herd by claiming 8 1/3rd ducks, for a total of 0.25 LSU. If I do to that though, it dilutes every one else’s share by sticking them with the damn chickens which doesn’t seem very smurfy. Since the total gift was 0.54 LSU, a more dispassionate way to split is to just divide total LSU by relative share size, giving me 0.104 LSU. I’m not quite that generous though so I’ll just take one chicken for the team, leave the nasty red-meat goats out of the mix altogether and end with a count ratio of 0:6.25:1 for a total of 0.1975 LSU, or roughly 1/5th of a skinny cow. That sounds about perfect to me.
[In case you missed that link up there, this is a game you can play at home... :)]
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