Chickens, Eggs, and Sustainability

[helwen]

Interesting thing on eggs -- what they're coated (or not) with and how they're cleaned, affects quality (and safety) of the egg. We aren't organic (yet), but at least our chickens are cage free, get grass fed to them during the warmer months, and we don't use chemicals on them or the eggs.

Health-wise, local and organic would be #1, then local, then everyone else. Processes used to stabilize eggs for long distance travel can be unhealthy.

Why you don't want to buy organic eggs at the grocery store

And to find local egg producers in your area, try your local farmers market, and/or check out Local Harvest

***
Sharon Astyk also brings up the point that most chickens, as commonly raised, are not very sustainable, because the grain usually needs to be imported. We're working on growing some of the grain ourselves, but I doubt we can grow a year's worth.

Her discussion of chickens is part of a longer article on food sustainability, relating to Where the UN Gets It Right (and Wrong)

Chickens can include grass in their diet, and free range is good not only for that but because they can catch bugs to supplement their diet. I admit I'm not much good at catching bugs or worms, so the only time they get those is if something wanders into their rooms or if I find them while shucking corn. Since we don't spray any of our crops, some of the ears of corn do end up with a worm in them.

So..... well we can work on making chickens more sustainable than they currently are. We could also look into having ducks instead... but they'll still need housing during the winter... guess we'll need to do some research.

Comments

[oakmouse]

We buy eggs from a semi-local Pennsylvania farm, through a local grocery. The darned things are so fresh it's nearly impossible to peel the hard-boiled ones without losing pieces of white.

I suggest you double-check anything you find on Mercola's website with a government agency website or reliable scientific source. I've found him to provide a mix of rumor, urban legend, truth, and misunderstanding. Some of what he says is right, some of it is way wrong.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Thanks :) I did appreciate that although Mercola talks about mineral oil, there's no claim that all commercial enterprises use it -- and in fact the opposite. That was interesting about the chemicals keeping eggs from getting stiff peaks when you're beating egg whites, never heard of that problem. But then, we bought local even when we didn't have chickens here.

The dry washing sounds interesting too -- we're going to try that, at least with the ones that are already pretty clean, and then we'll see how the dirtier ones fair. We'd just as soon use less water anyway.

[oakmouse]

I've never encountered the egg whites problem either --- but then I also have always bought local or regional and never from one of the giganto producers. I suspect that much of what Mercola says about nasty crap used on eggs is related not to the smaller operations but to the huge ones. (That goes for organic, too. Corporate faux-organic is more common than most people would like to admit, and it's no better than conventional, usually. Hain/Celestial I'M LOOKING AT YOU.) And yes, it is good that he doesn't claim mineral oil is universally used.

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the recent article about growing poultry feed at home in Mother Earth News?

[helwen.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't! Is it online or do I need to buy a copy somewhere? Thanks for the heads up :)

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

I'll send you mine along when I'm done with it.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

[dreda.livejournal.com]

We're currently getting a lot of our chicken from Chestnut Farms - if you scroll down that page you can see the chicken bus! Their chickens mostly eat grass and bugs, except in the winter when it's too cold to keep them outside some times, then they do get grain.

Incidentally, Kim (the farmer) points out that "organic" chicken only means that they receive certified organic feed - which means that they're probably NOT eating grass and bugs, but instead certified organic corn.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Yup, this is one of those things about "organic" that isn't so wonderful. That's why one of the bakeries in Northampton, Hungry Ghost, started a neighborhood wheat-growing campaign, because otherwise their organic grain comes from way over in Montana. A bunch of interested people grow 10' square plots, and then the crew goes and harvests it.

Another baker up our way, Bread Euphoria, has a contract with a farmer in Gill to grow some of their grain, so that they can get at least some of it locally.

Chicken buses are cool! :)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'll be getting farm-fresh eggs, but thanks for the link to Local Harvest. I've found five or six farmer's markets near where I work and live, and have put their schedules on my calendar.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Welcome :)

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Mine free-range anytime there aren't predators around. They get layer pellets ad-libitum. They eat *much* less layer feed in the spring/summer/fall if they have access to outside range. They still, however, choose to eat feed.

Holderread of Holderread's Waterfowl Preservation Farm (waterfowl) did an experiment one year: they pastured a flock of geese and gave them no supplemental grain. He said they were healthy, but they took much longer to grow to adulthood and they laid 1/3 the number of eggs as geese on grain.

sichling has a pair of books about Anglo-Saxon food between 500 and 1100 that cites a good deal of research on growth rates of livestock on "natural" feed and addition of grain. Sheep took 3 years to come to breeding size instead of the current 5 months or so - but their meat consisted of less fat and more protein.

So, sure, they can eat just free-range, but they'll produce like feral chickens...not nearly as much.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info - I figured grain might have an effect, but that's interesting how much of an effect there is.

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

"But realistically, meat has always been a high value luxury food..."

That is just plain not true. Gosh. What ever did the Inuit eat?

The article makes the point that some areas cannot support grain agriculture and they'll have to make do with meat ... but then bashes animal eating as bad, bad, bad. I find that added bias quite un-useful in what could have been a good article about raising food locally.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Sharon Astyk's article, I'm assuming.

Well, CAFO meat is bad. And importing grains from faraway is bad (oil use for transport). I thought that was her main point there. But I may have glossed over some of what she wrote, because I don't have a lot of patience with her writing style if she starts getting too wordy.

But of course, whether meat is or isn't a luxury item depends on where you live. In Alaska, I'd imagine grain was the luxury.

As a side note, I mentioned to Lyle that maybe one might measure the appropriate amount of meat per week by how often one could catch something while hunting or fishing. Of course if you're a farmer and have livestock, there might be other times that meat shows up on the table as well, for whatever reason. Just an idle thought, as I don't have plans for hunting....

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Well, that brings up another interesting point. We have too dense a population in most areas to allow hunting as a source of food. Consider that in Anglo-Saxon England, there were already restrictions on hunting by AD 500.

[the1butterfly.livejournal.com]

My yard is so full of bugs, I'm trying to figure out a way that we could get a chicken or two in for a day or two. Have you looked into chicken pens? They talk about them on Fresh the Movie, and they look like an easy way that you could get your chickens out to scratch and have fun. The farmer on Fresh (also one who appears on Food Inc.) rotates his cattle to graze in a new place every day, and follows them with his chicken wagon. The chickens scratch outside every day (easier in VA than in MA) and they eat bugs from the cow patties. My dad just got something about feeding chickens arsenic to fatten them, and I have to wonder who even things up these things? Who thinks of even trying to feed them poison?

[helwen.livejournal.com]

The tractor idea (wagon) is a great one, but not workable for 90 birds, unfortunately. That's why we want to build an enclosure/pen next to the rooms they're in. But we can't do that until the current repairs to that area are done (some leaking and stuff into a lower level) -- hopefully this summer. Meantime, we bring in what we can.

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

That is interesting. The eggs I buy are from a local farm, and they often still have muck on the shells, and sometimes even the odd feather. Of course I have no idea about the cleaning process they go through, other than it doesn't get everything off. That doesn't bother me though because we raised bantams and ate their eggs freshly laid on a daily basis when I was a kid, so I am used to the realities of shell-life. *g*

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, eggs au natural :D People who haven't raised chickens also don't know that eggs can come in quite a few shapes other than "egg" shape -- we keep the strangest ones, which happily are quite rare, but our customers have learned about some of the more common shapes - wider than "normal", long and skinny, and then there's the ones that are about the same pointy-ness at either end.

Fortunately most of ours aren't too dirty -- don't know if it's the type of chicken, or because we gather every day.

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

Of course you have heard of the Oooh Aaah Bird, so called because she lays square eggs. ;-)

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Yikes! No, but I used to have a mold for making square eggs... picked it up at a tag sale I think. Boil an egg, shell it, and put it in the mold, and it gradually conforms to the shape under gentle pressure... no, I didn't keep it, but it seemed like an entertaining idea at the time :D

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

LOL. I think I've seen eggs done using something like that. The idea was to be able to slice them for square sandwiches. Talk about trying to improve on nature for the sake of convenience! LOL

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

I tend to prefer unwashed eggs, they lend themselves well to a number of processes and storage methods well.
The other day I was at a local farm, they refused to sell me "dirty" eggs, and explained that they could get in a raft of trouble.

Then again, the farm manager for the beef, pork, and cheese farm is a vegan.

[freya46.livejournal.com]

I don't know the methods used up here. I do know that I buy free-range when I can from the grocery. I also wash the egg before I crack it.