Poorly chicken

[gazzagerkin]

we lost our rhode ranger after 2 years our amber ranger after 2 3/4 years

our sussex ranger is coming up to 3 years

have we been unlucky or is this about right ?

does life expectancy chang with breed ?

who has the oldest hybrid ?

 

cheers gaz

[dance in the dark]

I have four hybrids who are just about a year and a half old.

 

As I understand it anything between about 2.5 and 4 years is about normal. Anything older than that is doing very well. But there seems a lot of variation, just as some will stop laying after about two years, some will continue right till the day they die.

 

I have heard that white stars and warrens (rhode ranger) can have shorter lives, I guess this could be because of their reputations for the best egg production, and it tends to be that the better rate of laying equals a more compressed laying life, which equals a shorter lived bird

[Ain't Nobody Here]

Of the 5 I've lost, the oldest reached just under 4 yrs old the others were between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2.

[House MD 221B]

Scramble was 9 months old but she had complications after a huge softie and an underlying infection Which in spite of intensive treatment she wasn't going to recover from and had to be PTS.

Poach was 3 Years old and died from either an aneurysm or a heart attack, appeared to have happened very suddenly (we found her when we arrived home from a holiday)

and Angua was a bantam and was 2 and a half, again she died in her sleep, I went out in the morning and she was in the nesting box with her eyes shut.

 

But Penny and Peaky are both now 3, and both still going strong and laying pretty much daily.

 

Please see signature for Breeds. Hope this is useful to you.

[mabelandflosmum]

My Flo is a ginger nut ranger from Omlet, she is getting on for 4 and a half, is really healthy and lays me an egg every day!

[miller30]

My hybrids normally last about 3 years but i have ethel still with me and she is nearly 6 she dosent lay eggs anymore but freeranges with all the other girls in her retirement leanne

[sandyhas3chucks]

I have an ex bat that has been free 3 and a half years making her 5 (my longest living hen)

[Griffin]

My oldest hybrids are almost four and a half. My oldest ex-batts will celebrate three years of freedom on the 23rd so they must be around four and half too. The hybrids lay every now and then but the ex-batts don't.

[Jac and Rory]

Ooh getting a bit worried now. Got four black rocks, all 3 years old and laying every day. Fingers crossed for a couple more years...

[BarbaraJ]

I lost the last of my first 3 girls last week 4.6 yearslaid on and off up to the end.

[gongladosh]

so far -

 

Kent - Pepperpot - ~1 year, septic peritonitis

Kiki - Gingernut - 1.5 years, sterile peritonitis, turned septic

Chickpea - Gingernut (chicken of opportunity) - ~3 years, heart attack

 

Here's hoping it'll be a while before the next one...

[chickie1]

We have just lost our fourth and last hen, Speckle, she was a ripe old 5 years old. One of our original Omlet hens, Margot, also lived that long, passing away just before Christmas. Our other two, Ginger and Warnie were shorter lived, about the average I think. When Margot and Speckle retired from laying, they reminded me of two old ladies chatting about this and that as they foraged in the garden, we started calling them Hinge and Bracket. What lovely lives they had. I quite miss my twice daily (or more) trips to the end of the garden to see them.