"free range"--let's get rid of this nonsense term

[SpotTheCat]

but realize who is pushing this term...it's the walmart's of the world

No

 

[neo71665]

I free range, they have one acre they are let out on when I'm home and the weather is pretty. Since I'm disabled I'm home 90% of the time. 12 birds rarely leave my line of sight of their coop and run behind my shop.

The term I don't buy into on commercial crap is organic. Matter of fact I think most of the time it's simply a BS term to sell feed, meat, and eggs for more than it's worth even on small scale operations. If you are into it more power ya ya but don't pee on my head and tell me it's raining. I've been farming and raising livestock (or around it) for 41 years and it's just a marketing ploy.

All of it leads down to a fool and their money are soon parted.

 

[saysfaa]

...The term I don't buy into on commercial crap is organic. Matter of fact I think most of the time it's simply a BS term to sell feed, meat, and eggs for more than it's worth even on small scale operations. If you are into it more power ya ya but don't pee on my head and tell me it's raining. I've been farming and raising livestock (or around it) for 41 years and it's just a marketing ploy.

All of it leads down to a fool and their money are soon parted.

Free range (edit to add, as a term) started out as a big-scale-commercial ploy and still is in that world but now also means "I have a coop (usually and maybe a run) and I let the chickens out of it/both into a larger area that may or may not have any kind of fence around it."

Notice the flexibility of scale and purpose in what it now also means.

Organic is the other way around. It started out with real meaning. Then was usurped into a ploy to the extent that the ploy has mostly overshadowed the real meaning.

edit to add. Possibly "free range" was technically started as a real meaning that was almost immediatly usurped. Organic was real meaning for decades before being usurped.

 

[neo71665]

My granny actually free ranged. She had a coop but about all they done in there way lay. Often not even doing that. The birds roosted in the trees. She kept them fed so they stuck around. Aint no telling how many birds she lost or things we had to kill when we were kids. Back then it wasn't a term but just how people done it.

I still say the whole organic fad is just a way to separate a fool and their money. Just like the people that claim they can tell the difference between an actual fresh white and brown egg by taste. I'm not talking about ones that are fresh because they came from walmart that day. I've fooled many people over the years by giving them week old brown eggs and 1 day old white eggs. They still claim the brown ones taste better. Even better when you cook them and have them try to guess which one is what.

 

[3KillerBs]

Even better when you cook them and have them try to guess which one is what.

My SIL, with whom we share this property, is still squeamish about brown eggs after months of being given our eggs. She swears that they taste weird.

I may have to get more California Whites (or maybe some Anconas? California Greys?), just to keep her from wasting money buying grocery store eggs.

But then she's one of those people who are weird about food in general -- saying she "can't" eat something when what she actually means is either,

"I don't like it,"

"I was once feeling out of sorts and blamed it on what I'd recently eaten,"

or, "I didn't eat that as a kid growing up in the 1950's and early 60's so it's weird and I refuse to try it."

 

[neo71665]

I got an aunt that grew up around here in the country eating off the land. Moved to cali for about 30 years, came back, and refuses to eat anything she grew up eating. Dad and the rest of my aunts (that never moved off) still eat the same. I'm not even talking about anything highly weird, stuff like whitetail deer or anything grown in a home garden.

We got her growing her own tomatoes a few years back. She is proud of them and my uncle will eat em but she buys hers from the store. Won't even eat a home grown watermelon.

 

[3KillerBs]

I got an aunt that grew up around here in the country eating off the land. Moved to cali for about 30 years, came back, and refuses to eat anything she grew up eating. Dad and the rest of my aunts (that never moved off) still eat the same. I'm not even talking about anything highly weird, stuff like whitetail deer or anything grown in a home garden.

We got her growing her own tomatoes a few years back. She is proud of them and my uncle will eat em but she buys hers from the store. Won't even eat a home grown watermelon.

There are not enough facepalms on the internet to express my reaction to that!

One of my SIL's "can't eats" is nuts and seeds "because diverticulitis" (which she may not actually have and which my mother does have but was told that she can eat anything she likes unless she actually has a specific reaction). But SIL eats tomatoes daily -- it's the only vegetable she eats other than canned green beans.

 

[neo71665]

There are not enough facepalms on the internet to express my reaction to that!

You aint the only one, my g/f has a 5 y/o that is a less picky eater than my 64 y/o aunt.

 

[saysfaa]

My granny actually free ranged. She had a coop but about all they done in there way lay. Often not even doing that. The birds roosted in the trees. She kept them fed so they stuck around. Aint no telling how many birds she lost or things we had to kill when we were kids. Back then it wasn't a term but just how people done it. ...

Of course. It didn't need a term because it was now many, if not most, people have kept chickens for all of history. A few confined more and a few didn't keep them fed probably.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

if you meet somebody who says " i have free range chickens" ...what that means is that "i have 10 or leas chickens."

it was kind of a joke. nobody who farms chickens wouldn't have a fence. you have to protect your investment and you'd never use the term "free range."

That's not true. I have more than 10 acres avaliable of my own land, more than 20 if I include land I don't own that they have access to, and I have far more that 10 chickens that have access to all of that