10 Dozen A Week

The phone rang Monday morning at 5:45 am. The Post Office was calling to let us know our 26 baby chicks were there.

I really enjoy having a diverse flock of chickens, instead of just one breed. This collection is guaranteed to consist of at least 5 different breeds, and they will lay eggs tinted in shades of blue, green, pink, brown, and white.

Pick up a piece of notebook paper. It measures 8 ½ x 11 inches, or almost 67 square inches. Now put this piece of paper on a table in front of you. Look at it carefully..
This is more space, then the commercial egg production chicken has for its entire life. The chickens that supply most of the eggs for us are raised in over crowded unnatural conditions. The cages are known as battery cages.

The chickens raised in battery cages, do not know what it is like to spread their wings and run on the ground. They are sent to slaughter when their egg production slows, which is approx 18 months. The last moments of their life is spent hanging upside down on a chain waiting to have their throats slit, many with broken bones because their bones are so brittle they broke during the long trip, usually a trip without food or water. All for cheap eggs.

Do not be fooled by labels on the egg carton. Cage free sounds good, but in reality, cage free hens never go outside. They live in large flocks and the tops of their beaks are cut off,(painfully) to reduce pecking each other.

Mother Earth News conducted an egg testing project. Eggs from battery cage hens, compared to Eggs from free range hens. Their results found that, Eggs from free range hens had up to:

1/3 less cholesterol

1/4 less saturated fat

2/3 more vitamin A

2 times more omega-3 fatty acids

3 times more vitamin E

7 times more beta carotene

Read the excellent article here

Meet Real Free-Range Eggs

Everyone should raise their own free range eggs. Our birds are 100% free range, they go into the hen house at night. We let them out every morning and they roam the pasture and woods, returning to the hen house to lay their eggs and then back out, doing what chickens do.