How long do chickens live?

How long do chickens live for? It depends.

Victoria: a black rock chicken called Victoria, who lived in Worcestershire in England,
made the news by laying a couple of eggs in 2013, even though she was said to be 17 years old and hadn’t laid any eggs for years.

Matilda, a tiny bantam chicken from Alabama, holds the record for the oldest living chicken.
She was owned by Keith and Donna Barton who were magic show performers. They got Matilda in 1990, and she went on tour with them, appearing (quite literally) in their magic show.
Her habit of stepping from side to side as though she were dancing was what earned her her name, after the Australian folk song, “Waltzing Matilda”. Matilda never laid an egg, and she lived indoors all her life, and lived to be 16 years old.

At the other end of the scale are the poor male chicks hatched along with their sisters, the brown commercial hybrids. Since the males have no commercial value, they are killed within hours of hatching.

The male chickens of breeds raised for meat don’t fare much better. They are fattened up as fast as possible and are usually only about 8 weeks old when they are made into the kind of chicken you expect to see at your dinner table.

The female commercial hybrid hens who lay all those supermarket eggs do better than any of the boys. They are around 20 weeks old when they start laying eggs, and they are kept for about a year after that. After that, their egg laying production starts to fall off and they are no longer economically profitable.

But people who ask how long chickens live are usually wondering about the lifespan of chickens that they might keep in their own backyards. Of course chickens are susceptible to being killed by many predators, from wild animals to neighbourhood pets (even your own dog), and they can get sick or meet with all kinds of accidents, but assuming they live out their natural lifespan, what’s a good age for a chicken?

Commercial hybrid laying hens, raised and cared for by as livestock or pets, can be expected to live for about four years. That’s more than twice as long as their life expectancy as factory workers, but even so, that’s not a long life for a chicken. It’s probably something to do with the number of eggs that they will have laid over their short life as well as their genetic makeup.

The heritage breed hens are the ones who live the longest. There is some debate about whether some breeds live longer than others, but on average you can expect that heritage breed hens who are looked after and protected from predators and disease, are likely to live for about 7 or 8 years.

My longest-lived chicken so far has been Gonzo. Gonzo hatched in December 2009.
She was such a funny looking bird that she had to have a funny name to match. She started laying her small blue eggs at 7 months old, and she was never a great layer, mostly because she was always going broody. And boy was she a passionate broody and a fantastic mother to any chicks. But this last season, she didn’t seem to want to be bothered by any of that any more – she laid no eggs all season and showed no signs of broodiness. A few days ago, she was looking very unkempt and uninterested in life, although that night she hopped up on the perch with the others as usual. But the next night, she hopped into the nest box instead, put her head under her wing, and died peacefully with her flock mates nearby.

So, all you chicken keepers out there, how old is your oldest chicken?
And to all you people who are thinking about getting chickens, remember they are not just a plaything for a few weeks, you can expect to have them around for 5 to 10 years.

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