Our flock of hens have a very enjoyable life!
Their "house" is a mobile chicken coop built on an old boat trailer. It gives them plenty of space to roost at night and lay eggs during the day. The elevated design provides shade during hot summer days. The automatic chicken door opens just before sunrise and closes shortly after sunset which ensures they are outside all day and protected all night.
We rotationally graze our chickens by moving them every 4 days to fresh pasture. Keeping them inside of 6724 square feet of electric fence keeps them protected while providing ample space per bird (27.6 square feet per hen to be exact). By moving them frequently, they always have fresh grass & forage in addition to ample bugs. We wish grass and bugs provided all the food these ladies need but that is not the case so we feed them the highest quality grain we can get. Their feed is certified organic and soy, corn, and canola free. It is also small batch milled which means it's fresh when we get it which ensures the oils are not rancid. Because it is certified organic, it is always GMO and glyphosate free. We like to underscore this because folks often believe that GMO free also means glyphosate free but that is not the case. In fact, glyphosate is often used as a desiccant (drying agent) on GMO free grains just before they are harvested which leads to high levels of glyphosate in the grain that is sold. If you want to learn more about the health consequences of glyphosate, listen to this.
Why does this all matter?
Well, first off, animals deserve to live good lives. And second, not all eggs are created equal. We look at a lot of egg cartons and it's amazing the marketing hype that goes into convincing consumes that they are getting eggs from hens that are roaming around in grass when nothing could be further from the truth. So, let's talk labeling for a minute and what different terms actually mean.
Cage-free: cage free chickens are not in cages, that's it. Can you put 15,000 birds in one hen house and market them as cage-free? Yes! At that density, chickens have to have beaks "trimmed" with a hot iron so they don't peck each other to death. It's certainly different than 75,000 birds stacked in cages in the same hen house but it's still not how chickens want to live.
Free-range: ok, same scenario as above except there is a door at one end of the hen house that goes outside. Does the outside area need to be grassland? Nope. Can it be lifeless concrete? Yep. When eggs are sold as free-range all it means is that the chickens had access to the outdoors. These eggs are most often also certified organic.
Pasture raised: this is the gold standard as it means the chickens spend at least some time outside on grass or forage. I've read reports of hen houses with 5,000 birds that have daily access to about 3 acres of pasture. Those hen houses are stationary though so it can't take that long for the grass to turn into a big dirt patch.
As you can see, labels can be deceiving, and although they can give you some information about the chickens living conditions, without knowing your farmer, it's hard to really know what you're getting. I always smile when I see a pretty picture of a chicken in tall grass with a red barn in the background on a dozen free-range organic eggs that are sold at $3-4. The reality is you can't produce eggs that match that picture at that price point.
But what about the eggs? Do living conditions impact the quality of the eggs? Yes! A study from 2010 compared the vitamin A, vitamin E, and fatty acid composition of the eggs produced by both caged chickens and pastured chickens. This is what they found:
Pastured eggs have:
I'm willing to bet that chickens like ours have even more impressive numbers! We're looking into getting our eggs tested so we can test that theory! What we do know is that when we grade our eggs they are AA (best of the best), the yolks are plump and orange, and the flavor is amazing!
We rotationally graze our chickens by moving them every 4 days to fresh pasture. Keeping them inside of 6724 square feet of electric fence keeps them protected while providing ample space per bird (27.6 square feet per hen to be exact). By moving them frequently, they always have fresh grass & forage in addition to ample bugs. We wish grass and bugs provided all the food these ladies need but that is not the case so we feed them the highest quality grain we can get. Their feed is certified organic and soy, corn, and canola free. It is also small batch milled which means it's fresh when we get it which ensures the oils are not rancid. Because it is certified organic, it is always GMO and glyphosate free. We like to underscore this because folks often believe that GMO free also means glyphosate free but that is not the case. In fact, glyphosate is often used as a desiccant (drying agent) on GMO free grains just before they are harvested which leads to high levels of glyphosate in the grain that is sold. If you want to learn more about the health consequences of glyphosate, listen to this.
Why does this all matter?
Well, first off, animals deserve to live good lives. And second, not all eggs are created equal. We look at a lot of egg cartons and it's amazing the marketing hype that goes into convincing consumes that they are getting eggs from hens that are roaming around in grass when nothing could be further from the truth. So, let's talk labeling for a minute and what different terms actually mean.
Cage-free: cage free chickens are not in cages, that's it. Can you put 15,000 birds in one hen house and market them as cage-free? Yes! At that density, chickens have to have beaks "trimmed" with a hot iron so they don't peck each other to death. It's certainly different than 75,000 birds stacked in cages in the same hen house but it's still not how chickens want to live.
Free-range: ok, same scenario as above except there is a door at one end of the hen house that goes outside. Does the outside area need to be grassland? Nope. Can it be lifeless concrete? Yep. When eggs are sold as free-range all it means is that the chickens had access to the outdoors. These eggs are most often also certified organic.
Pasture raised: this is the gold standard as it means the chickens spend at least some time outside on grass or forage. I've read reports of hen houses with 5,000 birds that have daily access to about 3 acres of pasture. Those hen houses are stationary though so it can't take that long for the grass to turn into a big dirt patch.
As you can see, labels can be deceiving, and although they can give you some information about the chickens living conditions, without knowing your farmer, it's hard to really know what you're getting. I always smile when I see a pretty picture of a chicken in tall grass with a red barn in the background on a dozen free-range organic eggs that are sold at $3-4. The reality is you can't produce eggs that match that picture at that price point.
But what about the eggs? Do living conditions impact the quality of the eggs? Yes! A study from 2010 compared the vitamin A, vitamin E, and fatty acid composition of the eggs produced by both caged chickens and pastured chickens. This is what they found:
Pastured eggs have:
- Twice as much vitamin E
- 38 percent higher vitamin A concentration
- Twice as much long-chain Omega-3 fats
- 2.5x more total Omega-3 fatty acids
- Less than half the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3
I'm willing to bet that chickens like ours have even more impressive numbers! We're looking into getting our eggs tested so we can test that theory! What we do know is that when we grade our eggs they are AA (best of the best), the yolks are plump and orange, and the flavor is amazing!