Welcome to the forum. You've had some good responses so far.
1. What do I do with older hens ( will I end up with 60 hens that don't lay over the next 5 years if I retain them). I suppose it's naive of me to hope there could be some sort of happy medium win win.
We all have our own goals, facilities, capacities, and desires. What works for me will likely not work for you. You can keep them all as pets provided you are willing to provide facilities and feed to take care of them. You can eat older hens, many of us do. The people that consider them too tough or stringy pretty much don't know how to cook them. You can try giving them away or selling them, but once they are no longer yours you have lost control over their fate. You can try to find someone that would be wiling to take your 60 hens and provide facilities and food for them, manage the poop, treat them as required, and dispose of the bodies as they die of old age, but someone like that might be hard to find.
2. Anyone have experience in rearing meat chickens and processing them? I don't know if I can stomach doing the slaughtering myself. But I rationalise that a chickens life growing up in my honestead would by likely vetter than that of a farmed broiler one.
There are so many different ways you could go with this. Many of us raise the Cornish X or Rangers as meat chickens. I raise my dual purpose chickens for meat as well as for other purposes. Many of us process them ourselves, some people pay others to process the chicken for them. Some cannot kill them themselves but might be able to handle the butchering. Others can't. Don't let any one guilt you into feeling bad for however you feel about this. We are all different with different abilities and emotions. The way I look at it mine have a great life until they have one bad moment and I try to make that moment as short as I can.
3. Should I be more thick skinned and not be so emotional and not look at the chickens as quasi pets
That is totally up to you. You have to find your own way.
