No difference between pasture raised chicken eggs and caged chicken eggs.

[RWBP]

Maybe you should read up a bit more on nutrition?

 

[Villa delle Rosa Silkies]

My chickens are raised in a run and I have no hesitation to do that because it keeps them safe. Meanwhile, they have plenty of room to move around I "forage" them greens every day along with their balanced feed and I make sure they get their share of mealworms too. They have a good life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Whether their eggs and the eggs of a caged bird are nutritionally equivalent makes no difference to me. I still want eggs from chickens who are able to be chickens and who will live out their lives well fed and loved even when there are no more eggs.

I'm right with you on this. Both my husband & I refuse to eat eggs or anything else from caged chickens. I keep my Silkies in good sized runs, apart from 2 smaller coops & runs that I use for newcomers or for my little chicks when they first go outdoors for the day, coming back in at night .... or for any roos that I am trying to rehome .... But all of them are allowed out at certain times of the day, to forage around in the grass & weeds. I give the chickens/chicks/roos from each set of runs, 40 mins out of the runs, while I sit beneath a sun umbrella & read on my kindle (summer here in New Zealand). This way I make sure no predator is going to get any of them, & I'm going to spend time outdoors, along with the dogs in the garden ..... We have all the coops & runs set up within a large high-fenced area, so no chance at all of dogs getting at them (my own dogs don't go into that area either).

 

[JaeG]

In inner Auckland, NZ they have been testing chickens blood and eggs and have found traces of lead in many, especially at residences that were built pre 1941 (from the old lead paint). As an Aucklander I didn't feel so bad that our girls are confined to a run after reading that.

 

[Col1948]

I'm fairly new to keeping chickens but everyday I change their treat, in my mind they are getting a varied diet of all kinds of vitamins a nutrition.
Also they free range, they roam around the garden pecking away, they have a favourite area where they go under a big bush and when the sun shines they dust bath next to it and sit in the sun.
I've seen video clips of chickens kept in a run, I not against that especially for people who live where predators are, so it is keeping them more safe.
I have two big grassy areas in my garden plus a compost heap, also a few places they can shelter if the rain gets too heavy, funny they prefer to do that than go in the coop in rainy weather.
Going back to the chickens kept in a run, a lot of the video clips I've seen there is no grass, plus if there was any bugs they may be in short supply because the chickens will have eaten what is in that run I'm guessing. Where as free ranging in the garden they have grass and more room to exercise and feed, this is just my opinion and they seem health and happy enough.
I appreciate some haven't got the luxury of a large garden and very few predators so all they can do is have a run, so I'm not knocking them in any way.

 

[skwarksy]

I don,t care what these studies say I can tell the difference between caged and free range eggs, since I got my own chickens I,ve been able to do that .my chickens are not totally free range but have alarge area to roam .I dig grass and weeds for them when the weather is bad and they can,t get out of the dry covered area .when I walk the dog I pull dandelions and bring them home ,I wash them before giving them to the girls .the eggs are lovely .to hell with scientific studies they don,t prove anything !

 

[Scotty from BI]

Interesting comments. I don’t really have a good location where I can allow my hens to range for a variety of reasons. So I built a gigantic enclosed run which is half covered and gives them good protection from rain and mud on one side and allows them to have sun and an interesting view on the other. Since it is a hobby for me in my retirement, I do not look at it like a business, so I spend so much more on their feed and care and of course on the palace they live in than I could ever justify if it were a for profit business.

I found a location where I could grow a large patch of clover outside their run. Instead of allowing them to run free in the clover field, I bring the clover to them. In the spring, I have millions of dandelions which I cut and put into a dedicated food processor that I bought just for them. I also go the organic section of the grocery store and buy them carrots, arugula, spinach, chard, kale, etc and put it in the processor to serve up to them every day. I used to buy live meal worms and bought a refrigerator to store them in but learned that storing live mealworms in a hibernation state does not allow them to deliver a “gut load” which enhances the nutrient value of the worms, so now I just buy dehydrated soldier fly grubs and give these to them at about 10% of their daily diet. I tried buying grasshoppers because i loved watching them chase the hoppers but they were a pain to store and expensive to buy in small quantities.

The problem with serving them things like grass and other fiberous greens or even long stems like dandelions for example is that they will eat them as served and this causes impacted crops, so that is why these have to be chopped into fine pieces that they can easily digest. In free range they tend to pluck small segments from the grasses and plants that they eat since the plants are attached to the soil.

So, my hens are not free range but I would love to come back in my next life as one of my chickens if that were a real thing. (Kidding).

The one down side of serving up supplemental greens and bugs as opposed to allowing them to get it free range is that they feel like they are competing to get as much as possible before the others get it and just eat as much as they can stuff into their little stomachs in as short a time as possible. In free range there is no real competition and they can casually graze over a period of time usually the better part of the day and so the greens and bugs are digested over time and probably absorbed better.

 

[centrarchid]

Interesting comments. I don’t really have a good location where I can allow my hens to range for a variety of reasons. So I built a gigantic enclosed run which is half covered and gives them good protection from rain and mud on one side and allows them to have sun and an interesting view on the other. Since it is a hobby for me in my retirement, I do not look at it like a business, so I spend so much more on their feed and care and of course on the palace they live in than I could ever justify if it were a for profit business.

I found a location where I could grow a large patch of clover outside their run. Instead of allowing them to run free in the clover field, I bring the clover to them. In the spring, I have millions of dandelions which I cut and put into a dedicated food processor that I bought just for them. I also go the organic section of the grocery store and buy them carrots, arugula, spinach, chard, kale, etc and put it in the processor to serve up to them every day. I used to buy live meal worms and bought a refrigerator to store them in but learned that storing live mealworms in a hibernation state does not allow them to deliver a “gut load” which enhances the nutrient value of the worms, so now I just buy dehydrated soldier fly grubs and give these to them at about 10% of their daily diet. I tried buying grasshoppers because i loved watching them chase the hoppers but they were a pain to store and expensive to buy in small quantities.

The problem with serving them things like grass and other fiberous greens or even long stems like dandelions for example is that they will eat them as served and this causes impacted crops, so that is why these have to be chopped into fine pieces that they can easily digest. In free range they tend to pluck small segments from the grasses and plants that they eat since the plants are attached to the soil.

So, my hens are not free range but I would love to come back in my next life as one of my chickens if that were a real thing. (Kidding).

Be sure to keep adequate amounts of grit to aid processing of fibrous items. Sour crop / crop bound issues I seldom deal with even when birds eating 12" grass stems. What seems to cause issues of the crop are rapid changes in diet and not enough grit.

 

[Scotty from BI]

I just thought of another advantage to free ranging. In my enclosed environment, where they only walk on dirt, I must constantly remove poop to keep the dirt clean (and healthy). In free range it is not possible to go out and clean poop and so it is just absorbed into the ground and plants and bugs. I have to clean the poop every time I go out to throw down bugs and bits of veggies otherwise it would be contaminated by their poop. This is a bit of a chore I would rather not have.

 

[Scotty from BI]

I used to put grit into a large dog dish and calcium next to it in another large dish, but found that they just scratch dirt into it and then kind of generally ignore it, so now I take hands full of each and cast it out over the entire surface of their run so they can peck at it in the dirt.

I also, put a limited quantity of their pellets in a dog dish with some water which they seem to eat completely. This way I can leave dry pellets out all day for their consumption and what they don’t eat, I rotate into the wet buffet which they consume completely. This way dry stuff that doesn’t get eaten is recycled and doesn’t get moldy or infested by gnats and such.

 

[centrarchid]

Grit consumption I see is slow. It might take a month or two for 50 free-range birds to go through a large hand full of grit. I still would to know how long a given piece of grit stays in the gizzard of an adult bird. Grit feed out is based on granite. Some of oyster shell provided functions as grit for much shorter periods of time.