Do you trust the age of the hens? Most hens lay significantly less eggs by age 4 or 5. But then you probably use older birds for meat when they stop laying?
My DH won't eat our birds so ours are more garden pets rather than utility birds. & that's ok w/me. We aren't zoned for roo's so w/ just hens we get to enjoy the occasional surprise of eggs in the nestboxes. The birds are useful as foragers of insects/spiders/etc, useful manure in the garden beds & around trees, & they are masterful at soil cultivating.
The real benefit in our old age is the entertainment hens provide & the ease of having independent yard pets ~ if we leave for the day we know they'll put themselves away at dusk. Slightly less needy in our experience than a dog or cat yet hens are just as companionable as dogs/cats. We have a small cottage & only chose one type of pet as we could not accommodate both dog, cat, canary/parrot, & chickens so we ultimately chose a single most useful pet for our yard & for our enjoyment.
On farms there's a different mindset for raising animals as food. That's how I grew up on a farm but I was too sensitive as a kid on slaughter/processing days & never got over the trauma of it. I was ok w/DH not wanting to use our flock for the table.
Now that we have backyard chickens in a suburban neighborhood, not a farm environment, our hens are garden pets & are provided a forever home here. No one thinks of slaughtering their pet dog or pet cat as food & we never think of doing that to our pet hens either.
In recent years DNA-sexing guarantees we only get female chicks from NPIP breeders so we don't experience the heartbreak of rehoming cockerels which happened a couple times to us ~ DNA-sexing is such a relief.
This was fun sharing what we do & is not meant as any judgment on others' practices.
There was an occasion where we had to rehome a hen & here she is snuggling w/her new owner. This bird was a "people" person
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