How long can a chicken live?

Even though many people choose to cull two year old hens from their flock, chickens can actually live up to 16 years.  The average natural life span is closer to five or ten years, though, and is highly dependent on breed.  Hybrids tend to live much shorter spans since they pour a lot of their energy into that daily egg or into putting on weight as quickly as possible, and one site reports that Cornish Crosses will live only two years even under good conditions.

Another way to look at a hen's life span is based on the total number of eggs she can lay.  Many people believe that a chicken can only lay 600 to 800 eggs before she dies, so if she's one of the breeds that pops out nearly an egg a day, she may have laid just about all she's going to lay by the time she's passed through two or three egg-laying seasons.  Hens who produce fewer eggs per year may be able to lay eggs for more years before kicking the bucket.

Our oldest hens are about to celebrate their fourth birthdays, and I suspect 2011 may be their last year on the farm.  Of the original twenty Golden Comets we got in 2007, two died of heat stroke their first year (the impetus for the Avian Aqua Miser), we gave twelve away because we were awash in eggs, one was fatally injured by a previous rooster, and two more have died of natural causes since then.  The last three hens in that age bracket are wilely old birds, and I hope to snag their genetics by mating them with our young rooster and raising some chicks this spring.  And I won't cull them from the flock until they've slowed down their summer laying, so for all I know, they may have another dozen years to go.