Blind 15-year-old chicken survives attacks to be crowned oldest in the world

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Okay, so you won’t believe this – there’s a hen named Gertie, she’s fifteen years old and lives in Portland, Maine, and she’s officially the oldest living chicken! Seriously, she’s a record-breaker. I just read about her and had to share – a fifteen-year-old chicken is amazing!

A Golden Sebright bantam chicken recently celebrated a remarkable milestone, reaching the age of 15 years and 100 days old in November. This makes her officially older than Pearl, a hen from Texas who previously held the record.

To give you a sense of how old that is, most chickens live only five to eight years. Frank Turek has been caring for this particular hen since she was born in 2010, and he says she immediately became the leader of her group.

Overcoming a flock attack to find indoor luxury

In April 2026, Guinness World Records recognized Gertie as the world’s oldest living chicken. Despite this amazing achievement, the elderly hen is now completely blind, which has presented some difficulties.

Around the middle of 2024, Turek noticed his smart hen was acting differently. She stopped going up to her perch at night and began struggling to walk up the ramp into her pen. As her eyesight worsened, the other chickens started to pick on her.

Last spring, we added some new chickens that ended up being larger than Gertie. Because Gertie’s eyesight was failing, she became an easy target, and the younger hens began to peck at her, as Turek explained.

The bullying finally ended with a violent attack. He explained that on Christmas Day 2024, he heard a lot of noise coming from the chicken coop and found that Gertie had been badly pecked on the head, losing feathers and skin from over half of her skull.

He quickly sprang into action to help the injured bird. He remembered bringing her inside, cleaning her head wound, and dressing it with antiseptic. He even spent part of Christmas Day turning his dog’s crate into a comfortable space for her to recover.

Even though Gertie is blind and has been injured before, she’s thriving inside her home. Her owner, Turek, says she’s become a big fan of jazz. Whenever he plays the saxophone, Gertie happily bobs her head to the music.

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2026-04-18 18:18