While recent events have only accelerated the trend of city dwellers, city gardeners, and suburbanites raising their own chickens, buying an animal based on a trend or whim is a dangerous proposition. Chances are that the chickens will survive happily and people who only bought them for something they could be stuck at home suddenly have a new problem: a basket full of chickens they no longer want.
As anyone who's started a chicken farming business will tell you, keeping chickens takes a lot of infrastructure and planning. They are generally more difficult to house than a cat or dog, which can be given away as gifts or taken to a shelter. Therefore, anyone looking for their first flock of chickens should ask themselves not only how they will look after them, but also how long they will be ready to do so.
How long do chickens live?
How long do chickens live and lay eggs? Let's talk about it! Source: CoryNedlik
The question “How long do chickens live?” Can hardly be answered with certainty. Despite the best preventive measures, any hen can succumb to a disease, ingest a parasite, or be killed by a predator at any time. Life expectancy can also vary due to living conditions and many other factors such as genetics that chicken owners simply cannot take into account. However, there are some constant factors that allow us to estimate the approximate life expectancy of a hen based on breed, size, and laying capacity.
Small chickens, like dogs, live longer than larger ones. The reason for this is that bantams and dwarf birds have much less body mass than a Brahma hen, for example. So your bodies work less and wear out more slowly. Many dwarf birds can live up to 10 years or older if properly cared for. But there are variations within races that can make all the difference in the world.
Breed variation is probably the biggest factor in a chicken's lifespan and the most reliable indicator of its natural lifespan. Many traditional breeds are relatively hardy and long-lived; Rhode Island Reds can live almost eight years. In contrast, highly productive hybrids and other birds selected for certain traits tend to have shorter lifespans. Part of this is that when people selectively breed for a particular trait like high egg production or beautiful feathers, they tend to produce other traits as a side effect as well. This can include a tendency to illness or disease that can drastically shorten a chicken's lifespan.
The third factor that has the greatest impact on the lifespan of chickens is egg production. Just as larger birds need more energy and their bodies need to do more to stay alive, a chicken that lays five or six eggs a week uses a lot of energy and nutrients to produce those eggs. At some point, the best care and nutrition in the world won't make up for it, and this chicken is more likely to live to be four or five years old than eight or nine years old. This principle is perhaps best demonstrated by Matilda, the former world record holder for the oldest chicken. She died in 2006 at the ripe old age of 16 without laying a single egg.
There are exceptions, like the Rhode Island Red mentioned above, which are long-lasting reliable layers of egg. But even among the Reds, laying hens from one production line live shorter than their sisters from the line of the same breed. In general, the shortest-living chickens are high-production hybrid egg layers and the chickens that lay the fewest eggs live the longest.
When it comes to how long a chicken lives, one last thing needs to be addressed: the life span of roosters. They tend to be shorter than those of chickens, even if they are of the same breed and live in the same conditions. This is in contradiction to the chick average lifespan given above. Roosters don't live long and chickens tend to live longer.
How long do chickens lay eggs?
Laying hens slow down as they get older. Source: Roxy314angela
That brings us to the question of how many years a healthy hen will lay eggs. Most chickens start laying around 18 months of age, but they generally don't last well into old age. Again, there can be racial differences and drastic differences between individual chickens. Here, too, the essential question is whether a high production or a longer laying time should be prioritized, since the two are usually mutually exclusive.
The problem is that backyard chicken farmers often want something very different from their chickens than industrial producers. Industrial producers want chickens that lay eggs as quickly as possible in as short a time as possible. This means that many production birds, especially the modern hybrids, lay eggs almost every day for 18 months or two years and then drastically stop or reduce capacity. This is fine for an industrial setting where the bird can simply be replaced once it stops laying eggs, but less than ideal for many backyard home residents who want constant care over several years.
There are compromise options such as B. a production load of a heritage breed. These birds still produce abundantly, but they last longer than the hybrids, both in terms of active egg layers and overall life expectancy. Switching from an industrial hybrid to a traditional production strain alone is likely to double the high-production egg-laying years to three or four years. Pure heritage races or rare strata are likely to have the longest production at five to ten years old.
But raw numbers don't tell the whole story. "Five years of production" does not mean that as many eggs were laid for five years as when the hen was only two years old. As anyone with pain can tell, aging (gracefully too) means slowing down, and so is chickens and their oviposition. Most chickens lay the most eggs in the first year of production and then begin to shed. Their egg production will gradually continue to decline until they eventually stop laying eggs entirely.
What to do if you can't keep your chickens
A healthy herd will be with you for a long time. Source: Ambersky235
Even for people who love their birds and are willing to look after them for 15 years or more, it can sometimes be necessary to find a new home for their flock. Perhaps someone wanted to try keeping chickens and realized that it is not for them. Either way, chickens are difficult to rehoming.
Your best bet is likely a local farm that already has large scale chickens. Somewhere where adding your herd to the mix doesn't require major recalculations. Search online or contact the local chicken farm to find people who might be looking for a few more chickens, or at least willing to take in a few more.
If that doesn't work, farm-specific animal rescue is likely the last best option. The local animal shelter is likely not equipped to care for a flock of chickens, but depending on where you live there may be organizations that specialize in the rescue and rehabilitation of unwanted animals
Overall, the key to success is that keeping chickens isn't a great activity to do on a whim. Unlike a DIY project that you will never complete, chickens can no longer be brought down to the basement when you no longer want to deal with them, and their life expectancy ensures you are on a commitment of 10 years or more are bound. Knowing this beforehand will give you a realistic foundation to begin with and prepare you for a long-lived, healthy herd.
About our guest author Chris Lesley:
Chris has raised backyard chickens for over 20 years. She has a flock of 11 chickens (including 3 Silkies) and is currently teaching people all over the world how to care for healthy chickens. Your website, Chickens and moreis full of valuable information for maintaining a healthy herd.
The green fingers behind this article:
Lorin Nielsen
Lifelong gardener
