How Long Do Laying Hens Live?
Learn how long laying hens live, how to care for old laying hens, and at what age to cull chickens.
by Wren Everett
Many chicken-keeping guides available online and in print are excellent for giving you a good start for your backyard flock. If you want to know how to care for chicks, pullets, or vibrant laying hens at the peak of their production, you’ll find as much good information as you might ever want.
However, a lot of instruction seems to taper off after the chickens’ first two years. When I was a new chicken keeper, I didn’t consider the inevitability of my birds growing old. Most of my neighbors raised meat birds, so their flocks had a natural “expiration date” every fall. Mine, however, were my egg-layers, birds that I couldn’t imagine disposing of while still laying eggs for my table. I reasoned that since I was just a small homestead with no desire to sell the eggs commercially, I’d let my birds live and lay as long as they wanted.
And so, the years passed with my small flock until the reality hit that my birds were old. I may have wanted them to live as long as they could, but I had never anticipated what I would need to do when they truly couldn’t anymore.
I learned a lot from that first group of old birds, but not all was pretty. If you’re in a similar position, I’d like to share how to care for the senior egg-laying chicken.
How Long Do Laying Hens Live?
Young, healthy chickens pretty much act the same regardless of breed — they’re lively, active, and full of consistent vigor. One of the best things about checking a healthy flock in the morning is NOT noticing anything out of the ordinary.
Old hens, however, may start exhibiting signs of their age that depart from the norm. In my experience, these symptoms usually (but not always) start appearing after a hen’s third or fourth year. Here’s what to look for:
- Fewer Eggs: After three years, most of my first birds were still laying eggs, but their production did taper off (even if the eggs were slightly larger). If you have a flock of mixed ages, as I do, and aren’t relying on your birds for eggs for the market, this may be fine for you.
- Slower Recovery From Molting: A healthy bird usually gets through the uncomfortable process in a month or so. Older birds, however, can have sluggish regrowth. I had a few older birds that couldn’t grow new feathers before winter struck, meaning they had bare skin during the worst weather.
- Leg Weakness, Edema: As prey animals, it’s in a chicken’s best interest to appear as fit as possible for as long as possible. So when the older hen starts showing leg weakness, you know you’re dealing with a nearly “done” bird. In the wild, these hens would be extremely easy pickings for predators, which is the natural order of things. The predator gets a meal, and the senior bird’s struggles end quite suddenly. However, for the hen under the artificially safe care of a human, that natural endnote never comes. She persists far longer under our well-meaning administrations. Weak-leg birds may develop edema (fluid retention in the legs), sores on their breastbones (from laying prone), and become very dirty as they lose their ability to preen.
- Parasites: A strong, healthy hen has a robust body that’s difficult for a parasite to overcome. A weakened hen, with a body already under strain, is a prime target for mites, lice, worms, and even flies to invade.
- Weak-Shelled Eggs: Hens make eggshells from their own bodies’ mineral reserves. An old hen with a high egg production rate starts running out of material to work with, even if she’s had an excellent diet. As a result, she may begin laying fragile eggs. These eggs may break as soon as they’re dropped, resulting in the next point.
- Egg Eating: A broken egg in the coop is a ticking time bomb. At first, only the older hen may eat her own broken egg — maybe in an attempt to replenish her limited calcium reserves. As social birds, however, other younger hens will observe and copy her actions. You may end up with the frustrating situation I found myself in where certain “problem” hens would sit and watch the older hens lay eggs, specifically to swoop in and gobble the egg — broken or not — as soon as she lifted herself off the next. That problem was finally resolved by sending all the egg-eaters to the freezer.
- Feather Eating: With young birds, feather-eating often means their diet is lacking and can usually be resolved by offering more nutritious food. With older hens, however, I suspect that feather eating is, again, their attempts to replenish depleted body reserves. They seem only to eat the broken-off tips of their own feathers, resulting in a disheveled appearance.
- Prolapsed Oviduct: The oviduct is the part of a hen’s body that houses the forming eggs. As the laying hen ages, her reproductive system that has faithfully provided eggs week after week, burns out. As a result, the oviduct can become strained and weakened. Prolapse often occurs during egg-laying when the tender, pink tissue ends up being pushed out of the cloaca along with the egg. Exposed, it becomes dirty, inflamed, and infected. While you might treat it by gently cleansing and pushing the tissue back in with a clean, gloved hand, she’ll probably prolapse again with the next egg.
Do Older Hens Lay Thinner Eggs?
For the sake of illustration, take a look at the two old hens I have pictured. One is a four-year-old Silver-Laced Wyandotte, clearly showing her age. She’s feeble, hasn’t been able to regrow her feathers, and has been the subject of my rooster’s affections more times than she liked. She was a good layer, but her last eggs were thin-shelled. She ended up with a prolapsed oviduct, which I quickly treated by sending her to the freezer.
The second hen is an Easter Egger approaching her seventh winter. However, since she wasn’t a good layer, she hasn’t “burned out” like some of her younger coop-mates. Her legs are smooth and mite-free, she recovers from molting quickly, and she’s never exhibited any leg weakness. Since she’s still going strong, I’m letting her go on as long as she can.
The first chicken to hold the record as the “World’s Oldest” was a 16-year-old game hen (a class of chicken with very low egg production) named Matilda, who had never laid an egg. She was later surpassed by a 22-year-old game hen named Muffy.
This seems to prove that the more energy a hen puts into constant egg output — particularly in breeds hyper-selected for laying — the shorter her life will be.
What Age to Cull Chickens
There comes a point, no matter how extravagantly you treat your aging hens, when they start irreparably losing their health. Then it’s time to make one of three choices.
One choice is to do nothing. The hard part of this option is that a weak hen may very well be mounted repeatedly by an amorous rooster who mistakes her prone position as an interest in mating. Come winter, if she hasn’t succumbed to her battered state, she’ll likely die when the weather freezes.
Another choice is to put her in the poultry version of a nursing home. If you choose this route, you’ll probably have to isolate her from the younger, more active flock to protect her from them. I admit I did this with one of my first few hens, unwilling to watch her get bullied by the flock, but she spent a miserable last few weeks on her belly, feebly pecking at the softened food I positioned near her head.
The third option — and the one that I now choose whenever possible — is to butcher old hens as soon as they start exhibiting the tell-tale signs of aging. After about three years old, if they don’t recover from molting, they start consistently losing their leg strength, and especially if they develop a prolapsed oviduct, I give them the same last rites promised by woodland predators. Their lives end before they waste away, and their bodies won’t be wasted.
Ancient laying hens will never be a significant source of tender meat, but what they lack in substance, they often compensate for in rich flavor. The best (and likely only) way to cook them is long and slow. I have stewed 6-year-old hens all day on the surface of my wood stove, and they are fork-tender and flavorful.
As a keeper of older chickens, one soon learns that caring for our birds goes beyond collecting eggs and feeding them daily. It also involves making executive decisions about what is best for them as they age and potentially ending suffering before it really starts. I hope these stories and tips help you make the best, most informed choices you can as you enjoy your birds throughout their lives.
Wren Everett and her husband quit their teaching jobs in the city and moved back to the land on 12 acres in the Ozarks. There, they are learning to live as modern homesteaders: off-grid, as self-sufficient as possible, and quite happily.
Originally published in the June/July 2024 issue of Backyard Poultry and regularly vetted for accuracy.
