5 year RI red hens.

[Mrs. K]

Specklehen - does it get bitter cold where you live? Just wondering if the harder winters age the birds.

at Traphill - I have had similar experience with egg laying hatchery chickens. They look older, move slower, and die with in weeks of each other.
Mrs K

 

[speckledhen]

Specklehen - does it get bitter cold where you live? Just wondering if the harder winters age the birds.

at Traphill - I have had similar experience with egg laying hatchery chickens. They look older, move slower, and die with in weeks of each other.
Mrs K

I live at 2000 ft elevation in N. GA. Winters sometimes dip into the single digits, but I haven't seen it actually get below zero, though right at it a few times in the last twelve years. This winter so far, we've been in the high teens, but we usually get very little snow, only brief bouts of it. So, though we have true winters, they are not bitterly cold most of the time.

Used to be the hatchery birds died of several reproductive issues. Now, the non-hatchery stock die what I consider natural deaths. Why they do that at 5-8 years old so far, I don't know. They get the best of care, have nice buildings, fresh air, free range time, etc. Though I've been around chickens since I was a child, becoming being a military wife as a teenager and not being able to raise chickens, I have only had my own flocks for 9 years- I haven't had a chance to see how long they could live, other than the ones I have now being much longer lived than my original hatchery flock. The ones who are turning 8 years old are what I call the "second wave", hatched exactly one year after I acquired the first hens.