As It HappensThe world’s oldest chicken has ‘a love for life’
Life has not always been easy for Pearl, the world’s oldest living chicken.
She once broke her leg fleeing a raccoon attack. Her fellow hens have tried to kill her. She suffered bouts of chicken pox and pneumonia. And these days, her arthritis tilts her body to one side, and her best friend is a mop.
“She’s been through a lot,” Pearl’s owner, Sonya Hull of Little Elm, Texas, told As It Happens guest host Aarti Pole.
And yet, the feisty 14-year-old fowl survived it all to become world’s oldest chicken, according to Guinness World Records. Or at least, Hull admits, the oldest chicken whose owner bothered filling out the paper work.
The fame, says Hull, has not gone to Pearl’s head.
“She doesn’t seem to be fazed by it at all.”
Young at heart
Hull hatched Pearl herself in an incubator, and says she was always a bit of a runt.
“Hens have a pecking order and she was the lowest one ever since she was born,” she said.
In fact, Hull says her other hens have it out for Pearl. So when she started to slow down in her old age, the family decided to take her out of the chicken coop and let her live out her golden years inside the house.
Nowadays, Pearl resides mostly in Hull’s laundry room, where she likes to snuggle up with the aforementioned mop. But she often scoots her way into the living room to enjoy some television and neck scratches.
Mobility issues aside, Hull says Pear seems pretty content.
Every morning, she does a little dance when provided with fresh cherry tomatoes and grapes, her favourite. And she loves spending her days out in the yard — supervised, of course — digging up slugs.
“I think she just has a love for life,” Hull said. “She is still trying to live like she would if she were younger, and she seems to enjoy it.”
The average lifespan of an egg-laying hen is six to eight years, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s livestock program.
But living inside and being doted upon seems to be the key to chicken longevity.
Pearl’s predecessor in the record books, Peanut, also lived the pampered life of a pet at her home in Michigan until she died at the age of 21 on Christmas Day 2023.
“She’s always gotten her way and been kind of a spoiled little chicken,” Peanut’s owner, Marsi Parker Darwin, told As It Happens in August 2023.
“I will let Peanut sit in my lap while I’m watching TV or reading, and she just enjoys being stroked, and she will talk to us, make little happy noises. And that’s kind of her life.”
Pearl, too, is beloved among her people.
“She is part of the family,” Hull said. “The grandkids come over … and they pet her. They’re not afraid of her. She doesn’t try to peck anybody. She likes to have the back of her neck scratched.”
She’s also still surprisingly productive for an old gal.
“As a matter of fact, maybe it’s the news of being so famous, last week she laid an egg,” Hull said. “First time in three years.”
