The chicken my neighbour didn't want, Chipie, turned out to be my senior chicken, not sure if she is 7,8 or 9 by now. I think the issue with her was more due to personality than to health

.
I admit if I ever decide to get chickens again, I will maybe get ex-batts. Now I know what I am getting into : just giving them one or two year in a happy place before they die of reproductive disease.
The chickens that hatched here act healthy. It's the one I bought from a breeder as point of lay pullets I have troubles with.
I wish this was possible ! But even if we burned a whole acre of ground, worms don't live in the soil. They arrive with living hosts, flies, snails, mice... and those hosts will still be sufficiently near by that the chickens catch the worms again. In my case, the chickens who did not get worms or got them last, were the one who never left the chicken yard. If my chicken stayed locked up in their run all day they would not have worms... but I think we all agree that is not what we want.
I am very interested by all your thoughts on this.
I would love to see things in your light, RC, so hopefully you can convince me.
The statement made by MJ, to me, makes it very hard or impossible to qualify the relationship as one of friendship or comrades, because precisely of the authority of the keeper on life and death.
To take an extreme example which I don't mean as an analogy, could a slave be friend with the master ? Yes, possibly, in very exceptional circumstances. In most cases, the relationship would be too biased. If the friendship was true, the master would necessarily free the slave at some point.
I don't mean our chickens are slave. But owning the right to decide of their life and death, for me, means I am above all a keeper of a life and that excludes a relation on an equal basis. The chickens did not choose to live with us.
I can see, like Fuzzi, how we can work in the same direction and develop a sort of partnership , especially with the roosters.
As for Janet, MJ, it would be another long discussion. Since you saw her in the nest and thought she was broody, she must not have given evident signs of pain and been uncomfortable. And maybe she was just waiting quietly to die at home when her time had come. How can we know ?
I have some sounds to share with you in relation to Shadrach's remark about broodies not being friendly. Only one of these hens is broody, the 2d one, but all three make it clear I should move away

. (It's not my habit by the way to touch hens who lay, I just did it this time to see their reaction.)