Question about organic feeding and planting

[Nenad]

Also if I feed chickens normal feed non organic when they grow till stage of laying, then switch to organic feed. Will eggs be organic? If roosters eats non organic and passes to egg will egg also be organic?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

That's a question of law. Here in the US, Organic requires Organic feed all their lives, on certified Organic ground. Its a regulatory scheme, not a scientific one. If you were in the EU, I could hunt up those details, but Serbia is not, and I don't have the time, or the language skills, to go digging.

 

[saysfaa]

If you want to know for what you are eating yourself, not what regulations are then it depends on what is in the nonorganic feed.

For example, captan is a nonsystemic fungicide with a half life of less than 1 day in some soil conditions (up to 24 days) and when eaten by birds or animals it breaks down to something which is eliminated within about four days.

By regulations, you could not sell as organic anything produced in that garden or eggs or meat from any animals fed any plants from that garden at any point in their lives. For yourself, you could wash the parts of a plant that were treated or use different parts of the plant or plants from the other side of the garden or plants from a different part of the garden or plants grown two years later before feeding them to the hens or eat eggs gathered more than four days after the chickens ate treated plants.

Other substances are systemic and/or persist longer in the soil and/or persist longer in birds or animals that have eaten them. Some of these would make chickens "not organic" even for your own use.

 

[backyardfeedco]

To be considered organic, the birds would need to be on organic feed from day one. But that’s only if you are getting certification and want to market your eggs as organic. If the eggs are for personal consumption, it’s really a matter of preference.

I have personally noticed that raising our birds from day one on our organic feed makes eggs noticeably tastier and birds that are much healthier.

 

[Nenad]

If you want to know for what you are eating yourself, not what regulations are then it depends on what is in the nonorganic feed.

For example, captan is a nonsystemic fungicide with a half life of less than 1 day in some soil conditions (up to 24 days) and when eaten by birds or animals it breaks down to something which is eliminated within about four days.

By regulations, you could not sell as organic anything produced in that garden or eggs or meat from any animals fed any plants from that garden at any point in their lives. For yourself, you could wash the parts of a plant that were treated or use different parts of the plant or plants from the other side of the garden or plants from a different part of the garden or plants grown two years later before feeding them to the hens or eat eggs gathered more than four days after the chickens ate treated plants.

Other substances are systemic and/or persist longer in the soil and/or persist longer in birds or animals that have eaten them. Some of these would make chickens "not organic" even for your own use.

Do you know If I switch to organic feed when they start laying, will eggs be organic if they are raised on normal feed. It will be for my use but I want to know will they be organic? Thanks

 

[rosemarythyme]

Do you know If I switch to organic feed when they start laying, will eggs be organic if they are raised on normal feed. It will be for my use but I want to know will they be organic? Thanks

We can't answer that - most of us are in the US. Serbia has different regulations and you need to check with your agricultural department for any regulation on what defines organic.

In the US, that would NOT be organic. In the US, chickens must only eat certified organic feed and the land they're on also must be certified organic.