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What are "free range" chickens
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Posted by
kimmsr 4a/5b-MI (
My Page) on
Sun, Oct 28, 12 at 6:58
| What does "free range" chickens and the terms se for eggs mean to you? |
Here is a link that might be useful: A visit to Polyface Farm
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| Thanks Kimm I enjoyed that. I sure would buy from a raiser like Polyface. I do doubt "Free Range" It has a sound like an advertizing campaign for corporations. My local food chain would take it and run with it. Come to think about it I bet they have? I don't know se for the eggs. I have not seen it used around here. Curt |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| Around here, true free range chicken means coyote food, bobcat food, and/or hawk food. And that's in the suburbs. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| Yea just like "organic" food. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| There is a reason farmers keep the birds inside. To protect them from predators, diseases, weather ect. I guess it is more humane to let them outside to fend for themselves |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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- Posted by jolj 7b/8a-S.C.,USA (My Page) on
Wed, Oct 31, 12 at 18:49
I know someone who raise Free range eggs in suburbs.
When we were young on the farm our chicken ran wild & roosted in small trees at night.
Our dogs did not bother them, only the wild things that would come around at night.
I really can not tell the difference & doubt most people could in a double blind taste test. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| I find a big difference in flavor in both eggs and chickens that are raised outside with access to sunlight, grass, and bugs. There is also a difference in color of the yolks of the eggs with those of chickens raised outside with access to grass, sunlight, and bugs a much darker yellow then the yolks of those raised inside. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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It has been said, that the high cholesterol in eggs came into being when birds began to be raised in boxes and fed high energy materials. Much the same way cheese made from milk, produced by grassfed cows is actually healthy, rather than detrimental.
I've often wondered if these things were true. :) |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| I don't know about the cholesterol. I have read that the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 is much higher in grass fed animals compared to confined grain fed. I would assume that eggs would be the same. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| Gosh, I can absolutely taste a difference in both the chicken and the eggs. Probably more so for the eggs. The chicken has a different color and texture than a caged chicken....no question. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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- Posted by feijoas Temperate New Zealan (My Page) on
Sat, Nov 3, 12 at 3:38
I'm very careful about the provenance of chicken meat and eggs.
I basically don't buy chicken, and generally get my eggs off a friend.
'Free range' means pretty much nothing over here: farmers are legally allowed to keep birds indoors until they're 6 weeks old, then they must open up the trapdoor and the chickens can venture out.
Most chickens don't, as by 6 weeks, they're well and truly behaviourally conditioned, and an open, unfamiliar paddock must look pretty uninviting to low-on-the-foodchain forest species!
I don't find eggs obviously different in flavour, and since nearly all producers feed carotene, even cage-laid eggs tend to be quite orange.
I get free range eggs for reasons other than just taste.
As for meat, I find there's a dramatic difference. Free range birds tend to grow comparatively slowly, and the meat is much denser, darker and more delicious. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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As indicated in the video the term "free ramge" is meaningless today because the standarda have been lowered to meet the needs of agri business.
Know the source of your food aso you can be sure you are getting what you want. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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- Posted by RpR_ 3-4 (My Page) on
Sat, Nov 3, 12 at 16:31
| Put "free range" chicken or turkeys for sale in google and some of the sites that sell pastured checken and turkeys will give you a detailed description of what the various terms mean , especially to governments that may control such terms. I can taste the difference plus having bought different farms chicken while fried the simultaneously, there is a difference even between ones that are not raised in a concentration camp. I bought some eggs from an Amish gent this summer and there is definitely a difference in how hard it is to crack eh shell. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| The words, "Pasture-Raised" is what I look for when buying eggs. "Free Range" means nothing. "pasture raised" means the chickens are raised outside with access to shelter. Although I buy preferentially from the local Dutch couple who raise their chickens outside because I know they use organic methods and feed. They love their chickens and treat them like family! |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| If you don't know what free range chickens are-you have never lived on a farm and eaten a real chicken. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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- Posted by glib 5.5 (My Page) on
Mon, Feb 18, 13 at 11:01
| There are also technological solutions that produce a product very close to a real free range chicken, such as tractor trailers. Yes, they will have to eat some grains, but they have unlimited access to grass and limited access to bugs. Also, a chicken raised in an enclosed space, which eats kitchen scraps and other things (say, nettles in spring and pumpkins in Fall), is also very close to a free range chicken. Vit. D matters a lot, they have to have sunshine. A friend has fenced the garden (to keep the chickens out), and she keeps the chickens out of the coop when she is out (she is a homemaker, so most days). These get unlimited sun, unlimited grass, unlimited scraps, and whatever bugs they can catch over about an hour. All her losses have been to night predators managing to enter the coop. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| Free range at my house means chickens in the yard, chickens in the driveway, chickens in the flower beds, chickens all over the place! They range wherever they want to go on our 14 acres and sometimes visit the neighbors! I have very few losses to predators these days thanks to our 120 pound Karakachan livestock guardian who keeps everyone safe, even from hawks! |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| I raised and sold pastured poultry, a la Joel Salatin's technique, for 8 years. "Free range" for eggs has some meaning, but it is a marketing ploy for meat birds. Meat birds are bred to put on weight so fast that by 4 weeks of age they can hardly walk. They would no more be able to forage around a large range than a morbidly obese person would be able to run a marathon. The technique of putting these birds in cages on pasture and moving the cages daily gives them all the advantages of clean grass and access to insects while making their doing a lot of walking unneccessary. BTW, to legally call a meat bird "free range" all the producers have to do is show a door for the birds on a plan of the hen house, regardless of whether the door is ever open, or a bird ever goes out, or the size or quality of the range outside. Simply a marketing ploy. I no longer raise and sell pastured poultry, but I buy it. I couldn't possibly eat commercial poultry. It's disgusting. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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- Posted by glib 5.5 (My Page) on
Thu, Feb 21, 13 at 10:42
| All true LV. But in my opinion the cages on pasture technique produces better birds than free range would. Surely, in a third world country or in your youth, you have tried a truly free chicken, and found it as tough as cardboard. But apart from that, which is a detail, trailer chicken are nutritionally superior to truly free animals, due to the fact that they are much fatter, with much healthier fats than one would otherwise consume. They also have more micronutrients that are fat soluble, and it is conceivable that eating grass (or more generally greens) produces a more micronutrient dense bird than, say, eating fruits, which is what they do in the wild (once the bugs are gone). |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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| glib, all true, Pastured poultry is delicious. When I raised dual purpose birds on the farm years ago, we killed the roosters before 6 weeks for fryers. Old birds are for stewing--and they make the best soup. You used to be able to buy them in stores, but not anymore, even if you wanted to eat a commercial bird. And, BTW, with Pastured poultry, it's the production model, not the organicness (or not) of the ration, that makes such a great product. |
RE: What are "free range" chickens
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- Posted by glib 5.5 (My Page) on
Fri, Feb 22, 13 at 11:16
| Yes, pastured poultry (and pastured pigs) are incredible, despite the fact that they still eat grains. I hope my guy will someday plant a large field with a mixture of favas, mangels and cattle turnips, and put the pigs on it, but for the time being it is going to be a part-grain diet. Still, I can see that a chicken will eat several square feet of grass/clover/dandelion a day, basically much more salad than a human, and those nutrients must accumulate. The production model is diet-and-sun-based, as you say. The feed (grains, menhaden meal, supplements and grit) is not organic, although the grass typically will be, but it is free choice and a lot closer to their natural diet. The Vit. D and E content of the meat is ten times higher than in commercial meat, due to sun and grass. Same for omega 3 fats. When you have a US populace which is 90+% deficient in Vit. D and omega 3, you can see why these animals satisfy both health and taste. |
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