Average Life Spans

[BonnieBlue]

I noticed that one of the hatchery websites mentions average life span for a lot of breeds. For instance, I think they said 10-12 years for Barred Rocks, and 7 for New Hampshire.

I know it all depends on the care chickens get, but I assumw that with good care, there is an average age for chickens, much like dog breeds. I didn't see a thread here doing keyword searches, but is there one, or is there a website that talks about average life spans of breeds?

 

[CascadiaRiver]

In my own experience ONLY, it's depended on where they're from. I want to say avg is probably around 6-8 years with all of the factors including disease, predators, source, etc.

Bantams we got from a large scale breeder next town over and had over 200 birds at any time, while gorgeous, did not have long lifespans (he didn't breed for it, he wanted successful show birds, long lived weren't relevant, not pets) avg 2-3yr. I've gotten OEGB from smaller local breeders though that were better lived, 5-6!

Medium large fowl from the local feedstore/hatchery did okay, we never experienced any egg laying issues but I did personally feel like they were a little more susceptible to illness/respiratory.

Had the most success with backyard mixes honestly! Which likely were from a mix of small local breeders + hatchery stock selected for cute or friendly backyard pets, which then we received as cute backyard pets!

There is a LOT of factors and these are just generalizations of my personal experiences. I've had exceptions to it even in my own flocks! Such as from that big local OEGB breeder I had 6 birds from him over the years, *one* made it to 6! But he hadn't bred Birchens for long. I will say hybrid vigor can be beneficial if you don't need a fancy show bird

 

[BonnieBlue]

Thank you for the info. I don't need fancy. I just want good layers for my environment, with (hopefully) good dispositions.