Free Range Chickens

Courtesy of protohiro

Free Range Chickens

Many folks are seeing the economic and nutritional benefits of raising free range chickens in their backyard. Learn about organic chicken practices and raising backyard chickens at home.

Some families start a small chicken hatchery every spring to provide fresh eggs for themselves throughout the year. Others simply keep a few backyard chickens around as pets and for a smaller amount of eggs they produce. Raising chickens from the hatch yourself is pure, organic and humane for chickens, and fun and rewarding for the rest of us.

Truly Organic Laying Chickens?

Courtesy of hyperscholor

Organic eggs are produced by hens allowed access to pasture on a daily basis. This discussion is about Raising Chickens in the form of true family farming on a small scale, not what the deceptive term "free range chicken eggs" means to the commercial factory poultry farm.

The USDA allows that "certified organic" and "free range chickens" chicken eggs can be labeled as such as long as there is an access door. It does not have to access any pasture, with bugs and grass, dirt only is allowed.

The reality is that these chickens can and are being raised in a overstuffed huge poultry house with many hundreds of chickens in tiers of coops stacked 3 or more high. All the operation has to do is put a small access door to the outside.

It does not matter if the chickens cannot actually access it unless they are in the very front, and even then they will not get a blade of grass when they make it out. Label or not, they are not free range, happy chickens in any sense of the term.

The chickens are still fed the animal by product grain as before the legislation. So the point of the consumer paying higher prices for better fed and cared for chickens and eggs has been a failure.

Raising Backyard Chickens

Courtesy of gemsling

All over the country families are raising flocks of backyard chickens and using the laying chickens for entertainment and providing organic eggs for the family.

At my farm in Oregon, we have 32 hens and one happy Araucana Rooster.

We have sneaky chicken predators abound here, most notably at night, but even in the daylight my chickens are not completely safe from dogs and other menaces. So I have a strong well built chicken coop and a predator safe outdoor run.

The problem is, I want my chickens well fed naturally and I want our eggs to be of the highest nutritional content. That means they need protein from slugs, bugs, snails, worms and other crawling critters.

They also need vitamins and minerals from the clovers, weeds, grasses and garden vegetable scraps. Don't forget sunshine, calcium and grit.

Courtesy of sidelong

Our solution has been, well, babysitting. For several hours each day we take turns watching the chickens for safety, easy to do in the lovely summer months.

My next project will be to build a sturdy chicken tractor that they can use in the fall and winter when we do not want to be out on chicken patrol due to the weather.

Raising free range chickens means the hens have had access to pasture forage daily, and the eggs nutritional quality that results from a superior diet of vitamins, protein and minerals.

Unlike confinement factory raised chickens, grass and protein fed chickens are excellent laying hens as they consume bugs, worms and slugs for protein, and grasses, clovers and weeds for vitamins.

An egg can have a pale yellow or deep orange yolk, the darker signaling higher nutritional content. The color of the egg, white, brown or tinted is not an indicator of quality, it is the diet of the laying hen that determines egg nutrients.

So have your eggs and eat them too! Happy free range chickens.

Courtesy of photogirl7

Let's Learn More about Feeding Chickens!

Read on all about Backyard Chickens