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I'm curious about the 20 year life span, how many of those years are productive. As I understand it commercial egg operations make their chickens into dinner after about 2 years because they are not reliable. Is this dependent on breed? Do you have to refresh your flock from time to time?

My neighbors have a bunch of chickens, thanks to other neighbors who moved. They have a big coop and the entire back yard to cluck in. Happy chickens. I brought over my grubs from the compost for their dinner. Maybe I'll get some of those many eggs they lay!

I have a small backyard flock along with goats, rabbits, a pig and a llama (I'm in a rural area) and the usual dogs and cats. Chickens will lay steadily for about 2 years starting at around 6 months old, give or take a bit depending on breed and whether you have the right winter shelter (they won't lay if it's cold and dark, you have to provide light and heat in the winter for them to lay), and then lay less often after that but the eggs they do lay are larger. I've only been raising chickens about 5 years so I don't know exactly how long they'll keep going. Roosters are very loud, right now I have 5 of them (telling the gender of chicks is unreliable I was told 9/10 are hens but of the 6 I bought this year 5 are roosters), I'm only keeping one rooster so 4 are sadly going to be dinner.

Even hens past laying are useful to have around, they eat a lot of bugs especially ticks and up here in Maine that's pretty important. My chickens also like slugs which is wonderful for the garden. If you hand raise the chicks and give them plenty of attention chickens are very friendly and smart, so they really do get to be pets if you spend lots of time with them.

Noadi, way to go! Sounds like you have the lifestyle I'm gunning for over here. Reading you post, I have a few questions:

1. What do you do with all those eggs? Seriously, that's a lot of eggs.

2. What kind of enclosure do you chickens live in? Did you make it yourself?

3. Do chickens really make good pets? I'm excited about getting them, but I'm surprised to hear that they make good pets.

4. Did you kill and butcher the roosters yourself? How does one learn how to do something like that? I unfortunately have no family heritage or friend knowledge to help me out here.

5. Have you eaten any of the hens after they passed their egg-laying prime?

thanks for the help! Any answers you want to give would be appreciated.

I'm one of the friends, not the owners, of people with chickens. They go out of town about once every 2 weeks, and we go over to collect the eggs, count heads (umm...not sure what we'd do, exactly, if one were to go missing in the middle of Salt Lake City, but we count anyway), and check water & feed. We've shared one rooster dinner with them, and just end up eating a lot more egg-centric meals when it's our turn to share in the bounty. As in: hard-boiled eggs in salads, yolk-based dressing, lots of meringue cookies, and creme brulee for ten last weekend! I'm sure glad I'm not the one cleaning out the coop, though...