Life span of your chickens

[MrZip]

I am a newbie at all this and have been reading about how most people cull or butcher their chickens after one or two years due to declining egg volume. Then I read where chickens can lay eggs for up to 10 to 20 years. So I have a few questions.
Do most folks start over with a new flock after 2 years?
How many of you keep your chickens longer than 2 years?
How bad does the egg volume drop off after those first 2 years?
Just curious to know how some of you are managing your flocks and what you are doing with them after their peak egg production.
Looking forward to the responses.

 

[eastman5]

I have two 5 year old buff orpingtons who lay about 4 eggs a week still.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I am a newbie at all this and have been reading about how most people cull or butcher their chickens after one or two years due to declining egg volume.  Then I read where chickens can lay eggs for up to 10 to 20 years.  So I have a few questions.
Do most folks start over with a new flock after 2 years?

On this board, probably not. We probably have as many, likely more, who keep their birds as pets as they do economically productive livestock. For the folks who need their animals to pay for themselves they'll probably replace them at the end of their second lay cycle. If they are really on top of things they'll replace about half their flock at the end of their first cycle because those birds will have hit the break-even point and not be worth their feed. The remaining half will be kept for the second cycle and the very best of those for breeding later if they are doing such.

How bad does the egg volume drop off after those first 2 years?

All other considerations (feed, disease, so on) being equal a well bred bird will lay about twenty percent fewer eggs in their second lay cycle than their first, twenty percent fewer still in their third and so on and on. This is generally speaking. Specific individuals can be all over the map in that some won't be worth their feed from day one and the rare individual may be good to go into their third cycle.

Just curious to know how some of you are managing your flocks and what you are doing with them after their peak egg production.  

Ideally at my place we'd be eating the spent hens and cull roosters (most will be culls), but I hate plucking chickens so they get taken to market. If ever I can get enough time to put it all together I have all the hard-t0-find parts to build my own poultry plucker. Maybe then we'd start eating them ourselves.

What to do with hens that are no longer productive is a common discussion topic here. Some folks keep their birds as pets and don't care (much) if they lay or not. Others will eat them or as I do at least take them to market; still others don't want their "senior birds" eaten, but neither do they want to keep them if they are in an area where they are sharply limited as to how many birds they are allowed to have. We recently had a New York Times article come through about a chicken retirement farm out on the upper left coast where folks could send their non-productive birds to live out their days so they could get younger stock.

We have every conceivable kind of poultry keeper here. You'll find someone who is in similar circumstances no matter what.

 

[janinepeters]

We let our hens stay throughout their retirement, partly because we have plenty of space and do not need to cull in order to add more, and partly because we raise them for fun as well as for eggs. There is a natural attrition rate, so we never have all old hens. How quickly egg production drops with age is highly individual. I have a 6 yr old EE who lays an egg a week, but a 6 yr old brown leghorn who still lays 3-4 eggs a week. One of my 4 year old barred rocks is also still going strong.

We've been adding a few more hens every other year, so we always have some young layers in the flock. I kind of like having the older hens around, as they are already wise to the ways of the local hawks, and the young ones follow along without having to learn the hard way.

So that's what works for us. It's fun, there are always eggs, and the hens seem happy!

 

[JimWWhite]

We kept our first flock of twenty-four for about three and a half years. We're both vegetarians so we weren't going to eat them ourselves so when we got rid of them a couple of months ago a friend who has a very large farm took them. Pretty much he just dumped them out in his yard and let them free-range. He said he'd eventually eat them one at a time over the next few months.

 

[gwendalynn28]

I plan on keeping mine for their life span. My husband doesn't like to kill the chickens. We've had to do a few, a couple to eat and couple due to sickness. I don't want to eat them unless I have an autoplucker and those bad boys are expensive! My kids really like helping to care for the chickens. The older ones we have were all acquired from various sources and that was our first year of chickens. The ones I didn't like got sent to new homes. This is my second year doing chickens and this year I have two incubators and I've been doing some hatching here. I have my chicks and I'm waiting to see who's female and who's a rooster. The rooster will be rehomed as I already have two. The hens can stay. I do have an EE who getting older and still lays an egg every other day. I think maybe every three or fours years, I'll hatch a batch of babies and add them to the flock to keep the eggs coming. I hope this will work. My only concern is, that under the very best circumstances, chickens can live, like, 12 years and this would end up being a lot chickens over the years! I think the thought is nice though of letting a chicken live its entire life span since so many millions upon millions end up on the dinner table! I do like eating chickens though, so they'll be out of luck if I can ever afford that electric plucker!

 

[speckledhen]

We don't kill or sell our older hens. Most die of internal laying, egg yolk peritonitis or ovarian cancer before the age of 5, however, I have several 5 1/2 yr old hens still laying 4-5 eggs per week, though they do take longer breaks when they molt at that age.

My oldest hen, the last remaining of the original flock, is 6 1/2 years old. She hasn't laid an egg in a year and a half and moves slowly like an elderly woman, but as far as we can tell, there is really nothing physically wrong with her. She has a place of honor here as the Queen. Now that most all my hatchery hens have died, I expect the others who are not direct hatchery descendents to live and produce longer than those did due to better genetics.

 

[Erin~TheChickenLover]

I personally keep my chickens for as long as they live. I have older hens who lay very well. My barred rock hen, Fancy, is at least 5 years old, maybe even six, and lays the prettiest, biggest egg of all my chickens. The only time she stops laying is when it is either really hot in the summer time or really cold in winter. I have another hen, May, that is at least 3 years old and lays just as good as my red stars that are a little more than a year old and are at their prime. If you take good care of your hens, they will continue to lay well for years. I believe that after they work so hard for us in their early years that they deserve a good home to live out their lives in, even after they stop laying.

from Arkansas!

 

[Kim95037]

Yaaayyyyy!!!! I agree with the last post!!!! Some of us consider our chickens to be pets (me for one) so I will keep mine too until the last day. Everyones different. I get pretty attached to the little buggers.

 

[dreamcatcherarabians]

It's kind of funny. I got chickens because I wanted fresh eggs but wasn't really a bird person so didn't expect to love them, maybe tolerate most and actually like maybe 1 or 2. WELL! So much for that idea! I LOVE LOVE LOVE my girls. I'm really fond of my Cochins (read obsessed) but truly just love chickens regardless of breed. We might eat the odd roo but I don't see either of us being ok with eating one of the girls.....Especially since Cochins aren't noted for their egg laying, obviously we just won't notice who quits laying when...