Chicken lifespan

[Percydoodle]

I’m having a hard morning. Six years ago (like many other people!) we got 5 cute little chicks. We’ve absolutely adored them and since getting them moved to a bigger property and got more chickens. But those guys were our ‘og’ chickens and held an extra special place. They were buff Orpingtons. Maybe two years in we lost one very suddenly while we were away for the weekend. Our pet sitter found her dead. Shortly after moving to our new place we lost one to a bobcat. We learned our lesson on leaving them out too late in the evening and that hasn’t been an issue again. So we had the three og girls going into this winter. One had been looking not great this summer, getting skinny and a bit puffed up. No parasites. She passed away last month and we were sad but accept that they don’t live forever and the other two were still very healthy. Since then, one of them we noticed has a growth on her vent. It’s not poop, we’ve washed it all clean and it feels like tissue and breaks off like chicken meat. She has a vet appointment Monday to be looked at. However, our most favorite of the original group has suddenly gone downhill. She’s had a small occasional sneeze since last summer that didn’t seem to progress so we weren’t concerned. Over the last week she really deteriorated though. I’m not sure she will make it through the weekend, we can’t get her in anywhere because both avian vets are off today. I’m just feeling like I’ve let them down. I see so many people say their chickens lived to 10+ but now all of my old girls are not even going to make it to six years old. Am I seeing survivor bias when people talking about their old chickens? Do most not really live that long?

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Most chickens do not make it to ten. I have seen quite a few make it to eight but that isn’t the norm either. I would say five is pretty good! It really depends on too many factors to say that any one chicken keeping factor contributes to longer-lived chickens. My mom, for instance, has several eight-year-old chickens. Her coop has almost no ventilation and I’ve known her to feed her chickens straight scratch instead of layer or all-flock feed. She does all kinds of things I would consider poor chicken-keeping wisdom and yet half her flock is geriatric.

I wouldn’t beat yourself up about this. Your chickens have had a good life and they were loved!

 

[Mrs. K]

I agree with BlindLemonChicken. I have had a few chickens make five or six, never seven years. And to be honest, the six year olds were often crabby. If you get a lively 10 year old bird, that is a gift, but not common. Many of my birds die of natural causes around 3.5-4 years of age. Just ordinary hatchery stock.

Think about people and even with modern medicine, people die at all different ages.

I always hesitate to open these kinds of threads as people seem to feel guilty of things that are entirely out of their control.

Did you give them a good life? That part is under your control and your responsibility. If you neglected them, did not keep clean water, no food well then that is poor husbandry. You can feel guilty of that.

But the length of life of any living organism is not ours to control. Enjoy the birds you have, be grateful for the start they gave you in this wonderful hobby, and accept there death as a life well lived.

 

[SamLockwood]

They're not particularly long-lived animals even under ideal condtions. I had a hen that was over 10 years old and was pretty feisty until the last month she was alive, and I've got one old biddy that's at least seven years old and still laying eggs and keepign up with the youngsters. But those are rare.

On the other hand, I've had one enormous cockerel that developed heart problems because of it and had to be culled. I had one hen less than a year old get egg-bound, seemed to recover, then died of a heart attack a week later. One of my guinea hens, about a year old, I was treating for bumblefoot and during a thunderstorm died of a heart attack. At two years old I had a guinea get heat-stroke, I picked him up to take him inside to cool off and he had some sort of siezure and died in my arms as I was opening the door. One of my sweetest hens died of a heart attack at two and a half years old, and one from the same hatching died a few weeks later from, I think, a fall from getting knocked off her roost (I found her sprawled on the coop floor one morning).

It's one of the reasons I try not to get too attached. It's why they evolved a breeding strategy that's just "let's have tons and tons of babies as soon as possible." If I let my flock breed all the eggs they wanted to, I'd likely have over a thousand chickens by now. As it is, in three years I've probably hatched something like 200 and kept a couple dozen for myself.

 

[Seaslug]

I am sorry for your losses. We recently lost our last original hen; she was seven. I certainly hoped she would live longer and I feel I could have done more for her. All I can say is that I understand how you feel.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Mine are good for mostly about 4 years. After that, if they get sick I dispatch them. I don't expect them to live long lives and I'm not young, healthy and energetic enough to play nursemaid to them. I make sure they have good, happy lives and know they are loved. That's the best I can do for them.

 

[jwcarlson]

I've got a few hens (buff Orpingtons) who will be eight years old here in the next couple of months. We started with seven of them and have lost four then and now, but haven't lost one of these first buffs for a few years now. We have added store chicks or let them hatch their own over the years when one went broody. A lot of those chickens are still alive and fairly old themselves. We have a random Delaware hen that someone literally found on the street in town. I came home from work and it was loose in the garage. My wife had taken it from her friend who found it. No clue how old she is, but we've had her for 5-6 years.

A couple of the older ones seem to have stamina issues, particularly when dust bathing. It seems like they don't catch their breath as fast as they used to. They still run for corn and jump up to roost pretty high at bedtime.

A chicken is mostly going to live as long as it's going to live IMO. Sure, there's factors you can control. I've lost one to possums. One got tangled in electrical fence and had a heart attack just a month two ago here. She was 4 or 5. She might have lived to 10, but she was CONSTANTLY having issues with the fence. Stuck on the wrong side of it... somehow stuck between it and something else. Not understanding she couldn't just walk through it. Can't very well drop the fencing and risk predators getting the whole flock. It sucks and it's sad and certainly feel like a failure sometimes. I had a <1 year old hen who I just dispatched because I'd been nursing her for MONTHS with some mystery illness and it finally became apparent that she wasn't ever going to turn the corner. I spent enough money attempting to save her to buy a flock of chicks. As long as you're doing the best you can, I wouldn't feel bad about your chickens' lives (or the length of them) at all. I bet they probably had it pretty good on the spectrum of chicken lives.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Because my primary focus in keeping chickens is eggs and because where we currently live(large city lot vs the acreages i have kept flocks on before)places some constraints on the number of chickens I keep it any given time.... I generally don't keep a bird past its second laying cycle / third year of life. This allows me to have birds that leave me when they are still marketable to others and I don't end up with a whole flock of geriatric birds.
That said, a few years ago I made the mistake of getting my husband more involved with our birds, and he started picking favorites.. so we currently have three birds who are between 6 and 7 years old I believe, the oldest may even be eight this year. They are healthy and dont require any care the others don't (i am not a coddler/these aren't pets to me so if conditions are extensive or require treatment that is going to be expensive, time-consuming or beyond the scope of what I am able to do myself, I dispatch humanely). For the time being the old ladies keep my husband happy and provide a steadying influence in the flock dynamics..... but I have explained to him that even favorites have to go sometime. Honestly I'm kind of looking forward to that time for these three. He is learning, he's adapted his approach to making friends with someone out of the new additions each year and he has them as pets for a year or two and then he gets new pets