Are store bought eggs really as nutritious as farm fresh?

[CARS]

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For those who can't imagine what an egg layer cage is:

I made my quail pens and nesting boxes out of commercial layer cages. I removed every other divider to double the size of the "cage".

I have one 20' section still in tact with the cup waterers in place. Each section is about 9" wide and 14" deep/tall. Not enough room to even turn around... sad.

 

[dancingbear]

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Well, the first 2 pics, in my previous post, those are my chickens, and in the winter they still free-range, but there's not as much green, but there's always some, unless it's covered in snow, like it has been this past week. This is an unusual winter, though, here in central KY.

This is from last winter, but there's been snow for about a week this year, much the same.

Note the bare trees in the background. It's a pic from late winter, grass is getting green again, but the leaves aren't coming in yet on the trees. This is fairly typical of winter where I am. Much more so than the snow pic. If you think I'm deceiving you, please feel free to come for a visit, any time of the year, and I'll show you my birds, and the coop.

And inside, a little anyway, I don't have a lot of pics of the inside of the coop on photobucket. That's the bottom of some nest shelves behind the roo...

Here's the top

Here's some of the perches, there are more in the other section of the coop. Most of the chickens were outside when I took this.

It may not be the very best, but they have room to move around, and they seem pretty content. Even when all of the birds are inside, at night, or during blizzards or ice storms, even when part of the coop is closed off like it is right now to keep some roosters separate, (they are not free-ranging, now that they are old enough to be a pain, to spare the hens, they're on death row waiting for abreak in the weather) they're never as crowded as the ones in the third pic. (on the previous post)

That place may be "state of the art", but it's way over crowded. As for what I would expect to find inside the building you posted a pic of, I'd expect to find lots of chickens, but not nearly as crowded as the pic I posted. Chickens will go outside, spread out, and not pack together that much, if they have a choice. They like room to move around. The exception is at night, if it's cold, they crowd in together to stay warm.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

That's looks like a nice setup you have there.

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An aviary with the stocking density as shown in your photo is exactly what I would expect to find inside of that building. I'll guarantee that the six ton feed silo in the photo isn't just for feeding the couple of hundred birds that are out on the pasture in the photo. If you wanted to build something like that it would cost an easy $100,000, or more. The profit margins on eggs are slim. A few hundred, or even one thousand birds in that building would not pay the bills.

Your winter weather is very mild, not everybody has the luxury of fresh forage for their birds in the winter. If I recall correctly, the barn in the photo is in Lower Saxony, which probably has weather not unlike what we experience here in Wisconsin. Our pastures have been under at least a foot of snow since December. There is absolutely no reason for a hen to be out there right now. That aviary is a jungle gym for chickens, it provides more surface area for the birds and keeps them busy when they have to be cooped up.

I'm not arguing that this is better, only giving folks something to think about. On the topic of "store bought vs farm fresh nutrition", obviously there are many different production models in use, but there is no reason that eggs from the commercial barn in the photo (or possibly from the aviary in your photo) couldn't be just as nutritious.

 

[dancingbear]

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I've never had a store bought egg that had the deep orange yolks that my hens produce. The flavor is better, too. I suppose that hens crammed into a building like the one in question could be fed a lot of fresh greens and bugs every day, but you know they aren't. They get layer ration. Period. The bottom line there is profit. I understand that, and I know that a business needs to make money. Store eggs are cheap. Profit margins are slim. I get that. I also get that it's not necessarily the best way to produce food, certainly not the healthiest food. Yes, equally good eggs could be produced in such a setting, but they rarely are, if ever. The ones from the photo you posted, probably are just as good. The hens do get outside to forage, and they had a lot of green vegetation to forage on.

I would not expect the same stocking density inside that building, because I know how chickens behave, and given the option to go outside, they would not stay indoors packed that tight. They just wouldn't. That's not how they behave if they have a choice. It's possible they're that crowded at night,when they all go in at once, but not in the daytime.

Our winter weather is milder than a lot of places. We normally have a few days of very cold, a few days moderate to warm, then cold again, etc., with an occasional catastrophic ice storm like last winter, (our power was out 11 days, others had it far worse) this year we've had a lot more snow than usual, maybe some more on the way. Our first winter in KY, before we moved to this place, we lived near a river, and we had a really heavy snow, and it was so cold that the river froze. After about a week of bitter cold and lots of snow, it warmed up to about 60 degrees. Half the people in the area, including us, were standing around on the bridge in our shirtsleeves, watching the ice break up on the river. It was bizarre.
We can have ice and snow one day, and t-shirt weather the next. And still freeze at night.

So I realize that not everybody can let the chicken range around like I do, even though mine don't seem to mind the cold much at all. They ran around outside on the ice, last winter, after the 1st couple of days. They get so bored and stir crazy they don't care, they want out. It hasn't hurt them, I never see any black, frostbitten combs, or anything like that, like you'd see in a much colder climate.

I have seen pics of set-ups in colder climates that were a lot nicer for the chickens than that big crowded barn. Maybe some of the more northerly BYC'ers will share some pics. When our weather is truly dreadful, I usually don't let them out that day. I used to, but they'd just look out the door and stay in anyway, so I just started leaving them in for "storm days", they stay warmer that way. By the next day, they're getting cabin fever, and want out, and I open up the coop. It gets aired out, the chickens go in and out a bit, it relieves the stress of being closed up and crowded. They DO get very stressed, closed up and crowded, even though they have a lot more space per bird than the ones in the big barn. I mean clear space to move, without having to push through or climb over other birds. Why do you think so many big operations clip beaks? Because those stressed out, overcrowded birds peck each other so badly!

Ever been to rock concert? Or some other big event, with a huge crowd? Would you like to live in that crowd, 24/7, your entire life? Even if you had access to go outside for awhile everyday, would you really like that? Even with food and water available every few feet? Even if you had room to sleep part of the day? Crammed shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other people, all the time? I know I wouldn't. Animals don't like it either.