It makes sense to me that a larger breed would have a shorter lifespan, given this is a similar trait in dogs for example - I'd hope my two guys live for longer than 10 years though.
True, bigger breeds do have problems, but if you cancel out predation and sub optimal living conditions, meaning they’re clean and well cared for like yours are it lessens the chance of disease so that boosts their life expectancy, of course there’s always accidents and the chance of unknown illness that can come out of nowhere “like what I’m dealing with right now,” there’s no way to predict if anything like those could happen so all you can do is do the best you can for them, try tO keep them at a healthy weight, keep them fit and eating well and so on.
Honestly though you can do all the right things and It doesn’t always make a that much of a differerence, take me for example. Some of my birds like Leo have never had an issue, others of mine have. I have a female pekin “Henry” who’s 13. Typically a normal lifespan for a duck is 9. A lot of pekins only make it to 5. Her man Olaf is a jumbo pekin. He isn’t the picture of health, he looks like a turkey with popcicle sticks for legs, typically jumbos are bred for meat production so I expected his heart to give out years ago but he just turned 9.
I take decent care of my birds but I suck at it compared to some of the duck parents I’ve met on Instagram, there’s this one awesome duck mom who takes better care of her’s than a lot of people take care of their kids, I’m not kidding, these ducks live inside and have a better life than I do
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unfortunatly one of her sweet ducks died of cancer at only a year old which was heartbreaking.
There’s this other guy I heard about who has a gander that looks like he’s almost feral, lives almost like a wild goose and he’s in his 20s!
The point is don’t let that worry get to you to much, there more to life than can be controlled and if something does happen you like everyone else did all you could and have them an awesome life.
