How old can a chicken get?  I was watching a show about commercial egg production last night, and hens do not start laying until they are 20 weeks old.  They lay for one year, or 52 weeks, then their eggs are considered unfit for commercial production, and they are sent to the great stewpot in the sky.  Well, that means that my Suzy chicken is at least 2 years old, possibly 3.  Which explains why she does not lay many eggs anymore.  Now we will see how long a pet chicken can live. 

She gets so much food every day, that she can't eat it all.  I give her warm water every day, garden dirt about twice a week.  She has a straw bed she can sit on in the sun if she wants to, and her house is so warm (with a 30 watt bulb) that a rush of warm air comes out with her in the morning when I open her door.  It's amazing how much extra food (besides her egg mash and sunflower seeds) that is always available to her here. 

Right now she's going through a strange dish I made the other day of mac and cheese, laced with tuna and corn, plus some rock-hard prunes I found in the cupboard that I've stewed and softened for her.  She gets an odd but nutritious assortment of things to eat, and she's always interested in what I put out for her.  That macaroni and cheese dish is sorta okay for human consumption too, but not the tastiest thing I ever invented.  I've had a couple of servings of it before deciding it's a Suzy dish.