The difference between organic, free range, cage free, etc...

[Laney]

In North Carolina to sell eggs, not as organic, but just to sell eggs you have two options. Sell less than 30 dozen a week and you need do nothing about licensing, npip or regulation. Sell more than 30 dozen a week and you need to register, become NPIP etc. I do not know what standards you need to adhere to in order to call your eggs organic.

My chickens are completely free range at the moment. When it becomes colder I will start forcing them into the coop at night. We have a 17acre farm. Their coop is located in the fenced in Goat Paster, that is where we feed and water them. We have dogs on the farm and not all of them are chicken friendly, so we want them to recognize this fenced area as safe. Mostly they stay in the 4 acre pasture. We do not feed organic feed. We feed the regular layer crumbles. The extra expense of organic feed is more than we can swing for now. Or more than we want to swing. Our eggs are amazing and a beautiful dark yellow. They cook up fluffy and light and taste out of this world.

So I guess I would simply advertise mine as Free Range eggs.

Laney

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
I love debates.

I have 2500 birds that had their beaks tipped as chicks. I don't see any of them in horrible pain. In fact our organic co-op has 85 egg producers with over 450,000 hens. I've never heard any of our producers say "Boy, I wish we didn't do that, because I have a number of birds running around in horrible pain and they've been that way for their entire life".

The equipment for doing it is good and with proper training it's humane and highly effective. I'm not saying that accidents don't happen, but birds are culled as necessary and not left to suffer.

Spaying/neutering is not without it's problems either. Any type of surgery has its risks. If they are of the 99.9% that survive the surgery, and don't have problems with infections, torn stitches, etc., then cats and dogs have increased risks of many types of cancer. Is the minor surgery on a chick's beak more horrid than having somebody cut open the family pet, modify a few things, and sew it back up?

 

[ArizonaNessa]

Quote:
I love debates.

I have 2500 birds that had their beaks tipped as chicks. I don't see any of them in horrible pain. In fact our organic co-op has 85 egg producers with over 450,000 hens. I've never heard any of our producers say "Boy, I wish we didn't do that, because I have a number of birds running around in horrible pain and they've been that way for their entire life".

The equipment for doing it is good and with proper training it's humane and highly effective. I'm not saying that accidents don't happen, but birds are culled as necessary and not left to suffer.

Spaying/neutering is not without it's problems either. Any type of surgery has its risks. If they are of the 99.9% that survive the surgery, and don't have problems with infections, torn stitches, etc., then cats and dogs have increased risks of many types of cancer. Is the minor surgery on a chick's beak more horrid than having somebody cut open the family pet, modify a few things, and sew it back up?

I suppose since I have never owned or raised that many birds at any given time and have never had the need to do such things I maybe should not have commented on it BUT I was just commenting on my understanding of the procedure. If what you say is correct (and I am not doubting that it is) then I suppose you have a valid point. I just don't think it would be my personal choice. I have always been told that if the beaks are tipped too short then the bird will suffer. I have also been told that those birds can never chase bugs and eat pellets properly either. I don't have anything to back that up and thus the reason for me saying I didn't want to debate it. I like to learn and you are probably the only person I have ever conversed with that has had anything positive to say about the debeaking process. Is there a difference in beak tipping and debeaking? Please help me to understand if there is a difference. I LOVE to learn!!!! I might also add that I am not a big fan of wing trimming either. I know that there are good reasons for a lot of procedures done to modify many types of animals but I kinda feel like if you want to own something then learn all you can and love it just the way it comes. ( Don't take that last statement as me being attacking

) Do I spay and neuter my animals? Nope but I don't let them run around doing the nasty through the whole neighborhood either

I guess what I am saying is that we as humans should modify our things in order to own an animal rather than modify the animal to fit our needs. Does that make sense? The animal didn't ask to own us we asked to own it. Just my thoughts.... I don't begrudge anyone for their personal choices. I can respectively disagree quietly in my corner lol

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Well, the folks that vehemently oppose such things will tell you that it's all the same. Debeaking in the past wasn't really debeaking as it sounds, but removing up to a 1/3 of the upper beak. Beak tipping just removes the hook of the upper beak that extends over the lower. Almost all of our birds have beaks where the upper and lower are the same length, just the sharp tip of the upper is gone, although there are some where the upper is a little bit shorter than the bottom. The average person who wouldn't know that they are supposed to have sharp beaks probably wouldn't know anything had been done by looking at them. They just have blunt beaks.

If they had sharp beaks they'd probably shred me. They've become so oblivious to me working in the barn that they now surround me and start pecking at my jeans. If I need to do something with the nest boxes or waterers they will always peck at any extended fingers. My nieces and nephews like to come over and look at the birds. I always tell visitors "Don't fall down in there, you may not make it out." My sister will then tell them "Hey, you only need one eye anyway."

 

[Beekissed]

I adopted a small flock that had been debeaked and don't appear to have been "tipped". They are grotesque in appearance and their mouths are open to the air, which couldn't be comfortable when it comes to keeping mucosa moist.

That being said, they don't appear to be in pain now and do a good job of foraging with my free range flock....but I can't imagine the process was not painful. Imagine the roof of your mouth being severed without the benefit of anesthesia! Spaying/neutering is done under anesthesia and does not leave tender portions of the anatomy exposed forever more...I can't see comparing the two procedures.

I would venture to say, as in most situations that involve cannibalism in a poultry operation, that you may have too many birds in too small a space.

 

[ArizonaNessa]

This is what I thought you were referring to. Please excuse the site that I got the photo link from (it just happened to be what popped up from google). What you are describing does not sound that horrible to me although I would still choose not to. Thank you for explaining it so I could have a better understanding. Maybe if I was raising hundreds of thousands of birds at one time I would have to try and change my views a bit.

http://liberationbc.org/files/debeaked_photo_0.jpg

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
Most of the animal welfare certification programs no longer allow beak trimming, only beak tipping before 10 days old. That goes back to the OP about knowing what the labels mean. USDA Certified Organic, United Egg Producers, and American Humane all have good animal welfare standards and mark the cartons to show that the egg production complied with their standards.

I disagree that it only happens in crowded situations. I had a mixed flock of 15 hens on a quarter acre in my backyard. They ran the entire backyard at will and were rarely penned up. They had good feed, room to run, anything a happy hen could want, yet I had an outbreak of picking that got so bad that I had to cull two of the worst offenders and treat the others with Blu Kote. While the beak tipping for the current large flock was optional there was no way I was going to chance having problems with a $17,000 flock.

 

[greathorse]

We need to be very careful about what we ask for and what we expect from all manner of agriculture. If for example we (our government) (not being political here) decided that all eggs were to be produced in what many of us consider to be the perfect situation, Lord only knows how much a dozen eggs would cost. I am in the middle of raising some young stuff, have some stuff molting etc. and currently my eggs cost me 15 dollars a dozen (wish I hadn't done that math).

But my point is that we can raise our own in our own idyllic way or we can support those that make a choice to do it better than it has been in the past. And in fact we can honor those that have chosen to produce eggs as inexpensively as possible for the folks that want to eat those eggs. Yes I think there are battery producers that do a pretty good job and I think there are battery producers who dont do it very well.

If I must purchase eggs I vote with my dollar and always buy cage free at minimum and often organic as well. It is my choice and I get to vote every day with what I decide to purchase.

There are more and more producers every day that are voluntarily producing cage free eggs. Are they barn yard chickens? No they are not, but I think it is a long way from a battery situation.


I have great respect for Mac in Abilene as he is a commercial producer of organic eggs and that takes some doing.

Just my two cents worth.

 

[possumqueen]

Quote:
I'm with greathorse. I live in a poultry producing county in a poultry producing state, and I have worked on all kinds of farms, dairy to poultry. The farmers work like dogs, and they get precious little of the money we spend in the stores, AND they catch the devil for all kinds of animal issues. Organic is good. Back yard is great! But remember not everyone can do that.

And think about when we had no USDA. People caught TB from contaminated milk, and the salmonella that makes the news now probably killed a lot more people back then. They just didn't know it.

 

[ArizonaNessa]

I didn't mean any disrespect to Mac In Abilene at all. I just wanted to have a better understanding.