Humane Eggs?

Analphilosopher is concerned about the conditions enjoyed by the hens who are the source of his eggs, as are many other consumers.

While the good professor and I disagree on the legitimacy of various sources of protein, we both strongly believe that animals should be treated well.

The problem for the consumer is that labeling requirements are very lax.

This post will examine the terms used to attract concerned consumers, discuss conditions found on commercial egg farms, and make a few suggestions that might help readers find a source of eggs that can be eaten with a clear conscience.

When purchasing any farm products, one has to be very wary of claims made on the packaging. My favorite is the term "natural." All meat and animal products are, by definition, natural. This word has absolutely no meaning. A hen who spends her life in an egg factory, crammed into an eighteen square inch cage with two other chickens (at least until the inevitable cannibalism arising from such crowded conditions reduces their number to two, feet scabbed from the wire mesh cage, spattered with feces from the stacks of hens above her, suffering from mites, eating heavily medicated grain with a mutilated beak (the top half cut off to delay the cannibalism), driven insane by the lack of stimulation and the 24-hour a day fluorescent lights, dropping eggs which role down the slope of the cage into a series of chutes that lead her egg to a collection point still produces NATURAL eggs.

Another favorite term that is often applied to the packaging is "family farm." This term is also largely meaningless. Farmers who build two thousand foot long metal sheds housing hundreds of thousands of birds leased from Purdue have families. My Cousin Pinky's dairy in which he runs over a thousand head of Holsteins in confined conditions, has a family that helps manage his milk factory - along with twenty other employees. That's a family farm too. But we Americans like to imagine Ma and Pa and little Susie strolling through fields of clover to gather eggs from some quaint chateau of a chicken house, surrounded by contentedly clucking hens.

But the misused term I like the best is "free range." This is not entirely meaningless, but has little probative value if you are seeking to determine the quality of life of the hens who produced those eggs. The term "free range" means that the chickens have "access" to the outside. When my wife and I were looking for land, I stopped to look at a farm that raised "free range eggs." The chickens were housed in a run-down barn. Their bedding was at least two feet deep - all old, smelly chicken crap. The birds had access to the outside all right: From an old window, they could hop through to a four by eight chicken wire enclosure leaning against the side of the barn. The ground was pure mud and filth - they had no greens at all. The runoff from the barn roof made the pen a pool of standing water and mud. They had a couple hundred chickens - but legally speaking, they could label their eggs free range. A neighbor of mine has 150 laying hens and sells fifty dozen organic free-range eggs a week to local stores. His hens have about a quarter acre of land fenced by electric chicken wire. However, they have completely denuded his hillside – every single blade of grass or weed has been devoured and all that remains is a muddy mess that appalls the environmentalist in me: Hillside + bare dirt = erosion.

So if the labels on your eggs don't mean anything, what is a concerned consumer to do?

If you are going to purchase your eggs from a grocery store, I can't imagine that there is any way that the source producers have any quality of life at all. Any farm that produces enough eggs to go through the trouble of producing a web site, branding, advertising, and marketing will probably be unable to raise hens humanely. The reasons come down to labor, protection from predation, production, and expense.

I think we can all agree that a humanely raised chicken will live in clean surroundings, have enough room to engage in their telos (am I using that term correctly, Professor Burgess-Jackson?) - behaviors that are natural to hens in uncrowded conditions, are not over-medicated, and are protected from predators. It is easy to provide a pleasant life to a small household flock. My wife and I have a dozen buff orpingtons, aracuanas, and Dutch hamburgers - throwback breeds. They are basically another set of pets. But they aren’t economically viable. We get six or seven dozen eggs a week. We eat some, sell a dozen to a family down the road, share with family and friends, and, when I have young calves, use the eggs as a natural anti-scours additive to their milk (most farms heavily medicate their calves' feed, but I find the eggs work pretty well). The neighbors pay us two dollars a dozen, which basically covers the cost of feed because my girls get a big chunk of their protein from grass and insects. I built a chicken tractor - a mobile bottomless pen (see HERE for more on chicken tractors) - and move it each day so the girls have fresh pasture every day, don't kill the grass, move away from their waste each day so that sanitation serves as my disease control rather than drugs, and add manageable doses of fertilizer to the ground. I ran them between raised garden beds last year and they did a good job wiping out the Japanese beetles, but the labor of moving around the beds was just too much. All told, I probably spend about twenty minutes a day on chicken-related business for a return of six or seven eggs a day. Using cold, utilitarian math, if I sold every egg at the rate of $2.00 per dozen, I'm making $3.00 an hour. Obviously, someone who wants to make a living wage by raising eggs will have to reduce labor, control costs, and increase production. All three of those elements weigh in against our aforementioned standard of humane hen standards.

Want to maximize the number of hens? Build a bigger house. But this means overcrowding and high costs of construction. Want to use chicken tractors commercially? Pretty soon they become too large to move if each chicken is given enough space. If the producer opts for many smaller chicken tractors, the labor of moving each one becomes excessive. So you end up making the decision to have a stationary building with “access to the outside” whether it is the legal loophole of a tiny fenced pen or a muddy quarter acre.

Some readers might be asking why producers can't just let the chickens run loose. Simply put, because chickens are the French citizens of the natural world. Everybody defeats them. Dogs. Hawks. Rats. Possums. Dogs. Skunks. Raccoons. Weasels. Dogs. Foxes. Eagles. Snakes. Dogs. Some homesteads do have chickens that run loose during the day and are only penned for protection at night - but this option is not available to the large scale producer since you would still need the large building and the reduced production (chickens that expend energy walking around have less energy to maximize egg output) and inevitable predation would reduce profitability dramatically.

Fencing areas of land large enough to avoid the denuding of the soil in a way that excludes the laundry list of predators above would be cost prohibitive.

Another factor that will come into play in commercial operations is the breed of hen raised. Commercial producers want to maximize egg production in relation to feed consumption so will go with one of the engineered breeds. These breeds, while incredibly fecund, are also more fragile, so are unlikely to thrive except under confined, medicated conditions.

Finally, most producers have to deal with the natural life cycle of hens. At the beginning of their second year, they will go through a molt. During the molt, production drops dramatically. Many producers simply kill their hens and start with another batch. Others keep the birds in completely darkness and starve them to accelerate the molt (the malnutrition and darkness accelerates the process of the feathers falling out). This is an incredibly cruel practice, but the economics of production push farmers into this tactic.

The only model that I have seen that can lead to profitable egg production while maintaining a high standard of living for the girls is Joel Salatin's eggmobile. He has a trailer mounted on a hitch that he moves every day with a tractor. The chickens are allowed to free range every day and are shut up at night. Salatin combines the labor for these operations with moving his cattle (the chickens also peck apart the cow patties, helping control flies and allowing him to reduce the antibiotics and dewormers he feeds his cows). An eggmobile would not be successful by itself - if the trailer is not moved far enough every day, the chickens become accustomed to their surroundings and begin to lay their eggs in the grass and shrubs, eliminating the producer's profit. But since Joel also uses the land to produce cattle, he can afford to piggyback the chickens on the beef operation. You can read more about Salatin's eggmobile in his Pastured Poultry Profits book.

If 99% of commercial producers are eliminated, what should the consumer do?

1) Have a few hens of your own. It might not be cost effective, but a trio of hens will produce enough eggs for a family and can become an enjoyable part of your day. You can move the tractor each morning when you let the dogs out or go to the curb for the paper. Believe it or not, hens can make good pets. If you take care of the birds, you know for certain how they live. Buy Andy Lee's Chicken Tractor to get you started.
2) Find a small producer near you – somebody who keeps a small flock for a hobby and offer to buy a dozen eggs a week. You might post a message on the homesteading today poultry forum.
3) If you can't do that, contact a commercial provider and ask about how they care for their birds. Ask what "free range" really means. Ask about their molting policy. Ask to visit the farm. A farm that really does treat its birds humanely will welcome your visit. If they don't allow visitors, I would take any claim about the treatment of their birds with a grain of salt.
4) Finally, examine the yolks of eggs that you buy. Chickens that have REAL access to pasture and can eat insects to their hearts' content will produce egg yolks with an orange tint. Some people claim that they can taste the difference. I can't taste it, but I can certainly see the difference between commercially produced and humanely produced eggs.

Have more questions? E-mail me. There is a link on the sidebar.