"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
...
"Charlie Pridham" wrote in message
"Keith (Dorset)" wrote in message

As a bumpkin I still have no idea how long they live... or lay
for?

I'm like you Charlie. I hate killing my old chooks. I get about 75%
egg laying return from my chooks which must be about 5 years at least.
That more than I can cope with and I give away lots of eggs. The eggs
are a reasonable size but I have noticed that the shells are now
beginning to get thin. It might be time to cull them, but they still
good service turning over weeds and making it into compostable
material so no real hurry. I recall reading about a chook that was 12
years old - it wasn't laying but he point of the story was that the
bird had been operated onas a young pullet (for reasons which now
escape me) and hadn't laid an egg since the op - it was a pet but
apparently well at 12.

Between 8 and twelve is what we expected, cause of death was nearly always a
internal swelling, and hens do dead in style they always seemed to be on the
ground with their feet in the air!
Fox got the last of them a few years back and we have not replaced them as
most of my lot are not able to eat egg and would you believe garden visitors
were for the most part very reluctant to enter the orchard if there were
hens there (also stopped the scrumping by local kids :~)

--
Charlie, gardening in Cornwall.
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National Plant Collections of Clematis viticella (cvs) and
Lapageria rosea