Comparing and improving egg quality, flavor

[Happy Chooks]

Mother Earth News has done testing:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/eggs-zl0z0703zswa.aspx#axzz3HXXSy6tL

http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/pastured-eggs-vitamin-d-content.aspx#axzz3HXXSy6tL

 

[CrazyTalk]

Mother Earth News is not even close to a credible source - it's like 1 step above quoting the Foodbabe.

Notice there's no links to how the 'study' was performed, or what labs it was done in, or test methodologies?

Look at the poultryscience link I posted - it's actual labs doing the work.

 

[twork]

Most of the studies show no real nutritional differences (or very little). This is one of those things where the makeup of the egg is determined more by the genetics of the bird - the biggest difference tends to be in beta carotene levels, which are what makes yolks yellow, and makes people think eggs taste better (as shown in the experiment linked earlier)

That being said, there are still plenty of reasons to prefer free range birds (and I free range mine)

http://www.poultryscience.org/pr081511.asp?autotry=true&ULnotkn=true

Thanks. Very helpful, though for me it does still raise some other questions. (And doesn't do much for my mood.)

My yard isn't big enough to free range, especially if I don't want my vegetable beds to be nibbled to nubs. My birds do get some other space to peck around in when I can be out to make sure they don't hop the fence to the vegetables, but most of the time they're in a 6x12 enclosure. While they're enclosed I try to be sure I give them fresh stuff -- weeds, trimmings, kitchen scraps -- but I can hardly call their diet "free range". Best I can really do is "cage free" and even that might be a stretch.



Given all that... I don't want to mislead potential customers, and it's starting to sound like the only real difference between these eggs and the ones at the grocery store is that mine cost more to produce. Maybe I've been duped into thinking my birds are even worth the trouble and expense. Their manure is great fertilizer, but there's cheaper at the hardware store for that too.

I wish I'd found this site before I took the plunge four years ago. Grrm, braf, bother.

 

[twork]

I just can't get my head around the idea that diet doesn't matter at the output end. My birds eat really, really well, if my research and the label on their feed can be believed. No soy, all organic, nutritionally balanced... But that can be true at the grocery store too, at prices equal to mine by the dozen, give or take a buck. I'll never come close to those economies of scale.

Someone, quick, reassure me before I heat up a pot of scalding water and head out back with the hatchet.

 

[twork]

Mother Earth News has done testing:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/eggs-zl0z0703zswa.aspx#axzz3HXXSy6tL

http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/pastured-eggs-vitamin-d-content.aspx#axzz3HXXSy6tL

I read those pages, and I don't find links to the studies themselves, only summaries to the tune that I've seen elsewhere. It's articles like those that confused me in the first place; credible enough and they pass the gut test, but where's the methodology and data.

 

[CrazyTalk]

I just can't get my head around the idea that diet doesn't matter at the output end. My birds eat really, really well, if my research and the label on their feed can be believed. No soy, all organic, nutritionally balanced... But that can be true at the grocery store too, at prices equal to mine by the dozen, give or take a buck. I'll never come close to those economies of scale.

Someone, quick, reassure me before I heat up a pot of scalding water and head out back with the hatchet.

It's not that diet doesn't matter, it's that conventional commercial chicken food is really well designed - and it is designed and tested by teams of nutritionists and biologists. Soy is not bad for chickens. Corn is good for chickens. Chickens don't give a crap which one of permethrin or pyrethrin you used to kill mites(one is synthetic, one is organic, but they're the same thing).



There's a lot of studies out there on the nutrition of organic vs conventional agriculture - long story short, there aren't any. Some of the conventional pesticides are worse than their organic equivalent (very few, because they use the the organic in that case), and many of the organics are worse than the conventional is. Organic doesn't mean safe. It doesn't mean healthy. It doesn't mean no pesticides. It doesn't mean more sustainable. It doesn't mean better for the bees or birds or fish.

It means you use 'natural' instead of synthetic. That's it. It's a philosophical thing. It's the agricultural equivalent of being Amish.

 

[twork]

I read those pages, and I don't find links to the studies themselves, only summaries to the tune that I've seen elsewhere. It's articles like those that confused me in the first place; credible enough and they pass the gut test, but where's the methodology and data.

I spoke too soon, kinda. I did overlook some studies mentioned, and I do find some numbers, but not links to the research, only names and dates. In my experience, that sort of citation can be tough to track down, and without reading the papers themselves (at least), there's no way to know how thorough they are, or if the citing article hasn't cherry picked the data.

Right now I don't have time to go article hunting but at least I have some clues for where to look when I do, so thanks Happy Chooks for that.

 

[twork]

It's not that diet doesn't matter, it's that conventional commercial chicken food is really well designed - and it is designed and tested by teams of nutritionists and biologists. Soy is not bad for chickens. Corn is good for chickens. Chickens don't give a crap which one of permethrin or pyrethrin you used to kill mites(one is synthetic, one is organic, but they're the same thing).



There's a lot of studies out there on the nutrition of organic vs conventional agriculture - long story short, there aren't any. Some of the conventional pesticides are worse than their organic equivalent (very few, because they use the the organic in that case), and many of the organics are worse than the conventional is. Organic doesn't mean safe. It doesn't mean healthy. It doesn't mean no pesticides. It doesn't mean more sustainable. It doesn't mean better for the bees or birds or fish.

It means you use 'natural' instead of synthetic. That's it. It's a philosophical thing. It's the agricultural equivalent of being Amish.

I definitely understand the organic/synthetic distinction being overblown. I shouldn't have emphasized that so much. To the extent that I am concerned about organic anything, it's that there have been so many instances where some chemical was "proven safe in studies" but the detrimental aspects just hadn't had time to emerge. Yes, I know, organic hemlock is just as poisonous as hot house, but at least it's had a longer track record.


Funny that you mention the Amish. There used to be a grocery store near where I worked that occasionally carried Amish eggs, and they're part of the reason I took off on this adventure in the first place. Yeah, I'm just as vulnerable to suggestion as anyone, granted, but I thought I was approaching those eggs as a skeptic and I was surprised and convinced. Who knows, though, what the farmers were doing that differed from other producers; breed, overall health, magic divine angel dust, no idea. And of course psychology does surprise too.

 

[hennible]

I find different peoples back yard eggs taste different... And that my girls eggs taste different depending on time of year

I want to do a taste test now... Double blind with some friends... I guess hard boiled would give you a neutral cooking method... If I ever get to it

 

[twork]

As for the soy business... I have read what struck me as credible studies to suggest that large amounts in our diet can hurt us, particularly as it pertains to thyroid health. (Sorry, no links here, it's been a while, my memory is crap, etc. etc. etc.) I'm a thyroid cancer survivor so I'm touchy to such things.

Soy molecules in animal feed reaching humans, or having an effect on whatever does reach us, whether or not anything in the soy itself is passed on? No clue. And like I said I don't have time right now to do the kind of research that it would take to call myself reasonably informed.

Part of the reason I started this thread in the first place was in the hope of benefiting from the experience of others. I've gotten some of that and I'm grateful, but I also find, once again, that questions like this bring out everybody's biases, which may be informed or not -- informed by thorough, reliable sources or not -- and I feel like I'm back where I was, needing to start my own search through the available data in order to get to the present state of knowledge. That is assuming there is such a thing as reasonable consensus where nutrition is concerned, or that consensus and reality have anything to do with each other. History can obviously suggest otherwise.