what is organic, free-range, or natural in a chooks?

[Lupa Duende]

i am writing from canada.... this may or maynot help readers help me with terminology

i feed my chickens grains that i get from a local feed store, table scraps, rejected school lunches, and bags of 'scratch' from wal-mart.
i bake used eggshells, macerate them, and feed them back to them now that they cannot find much under the ice and snow
if my girls start laying again....
do organic eggs necessitate that i buy organic feed?

if they wander my property as they want until i shut them in at night..., is this 'free-range'

if they are thriving without medicated feed or any other input other than food, water, and shelter are they 'natural'?

 

[chfite]

From what I have been able to ascertain, there is no clear definition for any of the terms: organic, free-range, or natural. By their nature, chickens eat anything that they can find. Therefore "organic" would have to be rather broad. Free-range: how free and how much range? Anybody's guess. I think it means no cages. I can't even begin to try to plumb the limits on "natural".

Good luck trying to nail this down.

Chris

 

[delisha]

Free range= Birds that eat what is available in the wild/yard/pasture/garden with little to no suplamental feed.

Organic eggs are the eggs gathered from chickens that are fed a diet that is organic, no chemical, hmo's, drugs, medications etc

Natural chicken keeping is a terminology used for raising chickens the old fashion way..

housed, feed, watered, eggs gathered

Pumpkin seed used for worming
Wood ash used for removing mites and lice
Oregano used for infections

Things of that nature

 

[AVintageLife]

Great topic! Are you thinking about selling your eggs and how you would market them? To say the eggs are "organic" or "all natural" wouldn't that have to mean that everything going into the chicken was organic and nothing used to treat the chicken was a pesticide, chemical etc wouldn't it? Chickens definitely eat some weird stuff when they're free ranging but people like the sound of that "free range" for some reason. Picture all those little chickens running happily through the pastures, lol. I'd like to think of my flock as "all natural" based on my approach to caring for them but I did use poultry dust once or twice so does that mean they're not? I know people who sell their eggs as "free range" when in fact that flock has never stepped outside their run, which is not cool. Hope others will chime in on this!