Argh, sometimes I hate FR’s ancient web program. I had a whole bunch of stuff started for you and I got back here and it is all gone. Let me try again, saving it each time. Bah, FR! For all the $ we send, upgrade the site!
I have never raised chickens so you have that expertise over me.
This is from where I get my eggs:
All the different terms on egg cartons - ‘free-range’, ‘cage-free’, ‘added this’, ‘added that’ - can be confusing and misleading, and Big Egg-riculture is more than happy to keep it that way. But what we mean by pasture-raising is different. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Start with healthy, green, organic pastures. Sunlight and fresh air. This is where our hens live every day and spend all their time, foraging, dust-bathing, just doing regular chicken things. Every night we round them up (and you can imagine how much fun that is) and tuck them up for the night in little barns or mobile units, but come sunrise, we open the doors and get out of the way, so they are free to come and go as they please. Farming like this requires a whole lot of space! We require that every birds under our farmers’ care live on at least 108 sq.ft. of pasture during daylight hours. This number is also the gold standard for pasture-raising as defined by Certified Humane® , the most respected third-party Animal Welfare Certification Agency in the country. Our girls are voracious omnivores - it’s in their nature - which means they’ll eat just about anything they find out in the fields - grasses, weeds, bugs and worms - and it’s this varied diet that makes their eggs so amazing. Every few days we move them onto a new patch of grass, which keeps them on the freshest, most delicious greens, and ensures that the pastures have plenty of time to recover. Of course, our girls help this along by leaving behind the best organic fertilizer on the planet so that we don’t need to! When our girls are happy, our pastures are fresh, and vice versa! We never use any pesticides or herbicides, ever, so we know we’re not polluting the waters that we all share. Though the girls are always out foraging for food on the pastures, we provide them with a supplemental feed as well to keep them well fed and laying those beautiful eggs. Our feed is 100% vegetarian, antibiotic and hormone free - but, depending on the flock, it may also be Certified Organic or non-GMO. And that’s just about it. Nothing new or fancy. Sure there’s a little bit of heavy lifting now and then, but it’s the girls that do all the work! We just collect the eggs twice a day and get them out for y’all to enjoy!
And this is the kind of thing you can read all over the web about cage free chickens:
“Cage-free” means that, while the hens are not squeezed into small wire cages, they never go outside. “Cage-free” hens are typically confined in dark, crowded buildings filled with toxic gases and disease microbes the same as their battery-caged sisters. And like their battery-caged sisters, they are painfully debeaked at the hatchery. While chickens are designed to dig in the ground for food with their beaks and claws, when deprived of outlets suited to their energies and interests, they can be driven to peck at each other, having nothing to do with their time once they’ve laid their egg for the day in a barren building. Chickens love sunlight - they sunbathe daily outdoors - but “cage-free” hens are denied even this simple pleasure.
***“Cage-free” hens are typically confined in dark, crowded buildings filled with toxic gases and disease microbes the same as their battery-caged sisters.***
Chickens will die in a hot house with toxic gases, so most houses have ways to provide lots of fresh air. Many of the newer houses have what we call “Modu-cell” air systems.
Exhaust fans are started at one end of the house, usually holding 20-30 thousand chickens, It pulls fresh air in from outside from the far end of the house, the air goes through a water cooling system much like a very huge swamp cooler. This constantly provides cool and fresh air to the chickens. Then chickens get in no more waste than in a common hen house for about 20 chickens. Chickens are rather nasty birds, You don’t know HOW nasty until you work with them. Any bird that eats the undigested grain of cows and pigs is not finicky about what it eats.
You want to kill lots of birds? Let a power failure happen in hot weather! I’ve seen 20,000 birds die at one time because of this. The farmers walk through the birds to keep them moving and from bunching up and dieing. Most chicken farms now have backup generators for such emergencies.
*** they are painfully debeaked at the hatchery.****
IS this a joke? debeaking is necessary because chickens will peck at other chickens. If they EVER bring blood that chicken is doomed because all chickens will peck at them. It is a natural thing they do, pecking at a dark or bloody spot.
I’ve debeaked many chicks and here is how it is done.
You grab the baby chick. push slightly on the back of the head with the thumb, while pulling in with the index finger under the beak. This causes the mouth to open.
You then push the upper beak against a red hot plate and burn off 1/8 of the upper beak. Put the chick in the box and watch what happens. The chick will use it’s feet to scratch at the burned part for about two seconds, then it will stop and go on about it’s business as if nothing had happened. The entire beak is NOT burned off. I’ve never seen a chick die from being debeaked but I have seen them die from the sexers separating cockerels from pullets.
***they can be driven to peck at each other,****
You don’t drive a chicken to do anything. They are natural scavengers. If you put food on a cardboard floor they will peck at it, then scratch at the floor even though they don’t need to do it. It is in their nature. Take a sharpened pencil and hold it with the sharpened end in the box of chicks. The lead is dark and they will naturally peck at it because it is their nature to do so. If a dark piece of trash or manure gets on their skin the other chickens will peck at it till they draw blood. Then all the other chicks will peck at it till they kill the chick. It is their nature. That is why they are debeaked as a debeaked chicken does not break the skin of other birds.
***Chickens love sunlight ***
No, only a certain amount of sunlight. My chickens often rested during the heat of the day under the chicken house which sets off the ground, or under the weeds. Some sunlight is great, but not too much.
If you had raised as many as I’ve done (remember I also worked for a hatchery) you would see the falsehood in many of these tall tales brought to you by the animal rights groups.