How to Make Sense of Egg Carton Labels Free-range vs. pasture-raised vs. cage-free vs. organic vs. all the rest.

bonappetite ^

[bgill]

All I read is the unit price. I’ll take the $2 carton.

[Ellendra]

I can just walk out and grab them from the coup.

Same here! I currently have 7 hens, of various breeds and ages. I recently bought the stuff to start waterglassing the cleaner eggs. We'll see how that goes.

Last summer when there were no eggs to be found in the store, I was thanking God every day for my chickens. Eggs are a huge part of my family's diet.

Mine are in a coop with an enclosed run, but they're allowed to play in the yard if there's someone to supervise. Too many hawks and other predators to leave them outside alone. The eggs they lay have such orange yolks that they make store-bought eggs look anemic.

[Lizavetta]

Food labelling is one of the great scams. Another example: sourdough bread doesn’t have to have any sourdough in it. The crooks can just add vinegar to regular bread and presto... “sourdough bread”.

Same thing with cage-free. I read somewhere some time ago that Big Egg paid off the right government drone to allow them to say cage-free even if the hens were only allowed to be uncaged 5 minutes a day or something.

[Don W]

The more bugs and worms the hens eat, the better the eggs taste. The yolks are also a far deeper orange coming from actual outdoor hens.

All “free-range” actually means is that there is a door for the hens to go outside through. They have ACCESS to the outdoors is all. Because they were not allowed out before they started laying, the hens are afraid to go outside.

[Uncle Miltie]

A: Get chickens.

[HotHunt]

You're right about hanging the beef. We have ours hang for several weeks at the locker before they butcher it. We raise Angus cattle so they provide pretty good beef. My favorite is the bone-in ribeye, 1" thick for grilling. Mmmm!

We have chickens for eggs for ourselves but can't keep up with even 4 hens. So we end up giving most of them away to friends and family. They're not cheap but they are fresh. We don't care about all of the other labeling stuff the article talks about.

The older one gets, the more you realize that all of the things you thought were important in life, end up not being important at all in the end. With age comes wisdom.

Have a great day.

[Savage Beast]

I always buy eggs from the people who are good to their chickens.

[HotHunt]

👍

[Uncle Miltie]

Backyard eggs taste better and stand up all perky like.

Much better than store-boughtn.

But, Freedom!

Do whatever you want.

[Jotmo]

So not true.

Fresh eggs for your own chickens, (or someone who has some) are far superior to store bought eggs in every way.

[Seruzawa]

Unfortunately I think that isn’t satire. Those people are exactly like that. Portlandia is eerie in its accurate depictions of left wing nuts.

[gundog]

“Free range” has a meaning in law that is not what most people think of as free range. Bugs, worms...fine. Raised birds for years. The hens couldn’t wait to get out in the morning and scratch through the molehills that the cats used as litter boxes.

[HotHunt]

I've raised Rhode Island Red layers and now some sort of different variety this time around, (you have to start over every couple couple or three years when they quit laying) and I honestly can't tell the difference. I just scramble them and they all taste the same to me, probably because I mix in meat, onions, peppers, and spices to the eggs. Hard to tell what the eggs taste like when they're covered in Tabasco Sauce. :-)

The older I get, the more I realize that all of the things I thought were important in life, end up not being very important at all in the end.

With age comes wisdom.

[eyeamok]

Egg Cartons?? We try to use the cardboard ones because all the eggs fit in, the plastic egg cartons aren’t flexible and the Duck and 2 chickens lay pretty big eggs, so cardboard is best.

yeah, I know...

[Yardstick]

Yeah, I was given a dozen fresh eggs recently by a family who raise chickens and I have to agree there’s a difference. Bigger yolks with deeper color, thicker shells, and less watery whites. It was easy to imagine they came from happier, healthier hens. Even so, I’m fairly content to just buy regular old eggs by the 18 pack because I’m not sure there’s enough difference to justify the price. I do think about it though.

[minnesota_bound]

An egg is an egg.

[AppyPappy]

We get local eggs. They are completely different from anything at the store.

[AlaskaErik]

I avoid anything labeled “organic” or “free range”.

[Pollard]

mother earth news has an article about long term storage for eggs. They tested every different method. I can’t remember which method was best.

We don’t eat many and one hen would pretty much does it but I have a buddy I can give eggs to and the dogs. We’ve got two dozen sitting here from one hen. I need to boil a dozen. I do them in the instant pot these days. I had it down pat with a pan but the IP is so fool proof and easy. Little water, the eggs and hit the egg button.

[Pollard]

Here we go, https://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/how-to-store-fresh-eggs-zmaz77ndzgoe