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EGGS!!!

I’ve stopped buying eggs now because free range are no longer available. The only eggs in shops are barn eggs. Am I wrong to think that barn eggs are all laid by chickens which have been reared in reprehensible conditions?

As a generalisation, all poultry, layers or broilers, start life in the same conditions. In recent years, there has been a move to seperate strains being preferred colony v. barn v. free-range for layers, and the equivalent for broilers. Back not so long ago, it was just the same chickens. It is all mega-business and that means the cheapest way to produce etc.

Barn eggs are very often just the eggs from free-range birds but with the shed pop-holes shut. Loads of free-range birds seldom or never leave the shed anyway.

Due to Joe Average aka the supermarkets being unwilling to increase prices for eggs, the estimate given earlier today by a representative of UK egg producers, is that the UK produced around one billion fewer shell eggs in 2022, than it did in 2021 (that is something like 3 million less layers). As existing laying flocks ended their economic life, the sheds were not restocked as no-one could make money by doing so. (Shell eggs are what sell to Joe Public - there is a whole different industry producing fresh egg liquid for use in the food industry. Lots of videos on YouTube showing egg-cracking plants in operation for anyone interested/curious.)
 
I think 'barn' eggs are literally eggs produced by chickens reared and living inside with no outdoor excursion. Avian flu is probably responsible for free range chicks becoming barn chicks. Barn chicks are very very common.
Then you have to think, 'when is a barn a factory' ?
I think the short answer is that its better to buy eggs and help egg producers earn a living and be able to provide their chicks with a slightly better life, than be too fussy about a chickens lifestyle. I tend to think that a happy chicken will be one well fed, free from disease and living in uncrowded conditions. Sun and a wildflower meadow in spring are walt disney dreaming really. Small producers can do it fine, but farm free range have very little time outside, and rarely/never free in a flower meadow.
 
Can you spell out what you're saying here? I mean, as far as I know you can't get eggs reared like the pictures on that website suggest from anywhere in the UK.

Certainly still restricted in Uk, AI is still a real threat rumbling around in the wild population.

We've closed two of our older broiler sheds close to the road and do everything possible to keep the site clean.

The economics of compensation and insurance are such that we wouldn't restock after AI; as a precaution i've got planning approval for conversion to storage. Far less risk and aggravation.
 
I’ve stopped buying eggs now because free range are no longer available. The only eggs in shops are barn eggs. Am I wrong to think that barn eggs are all laid by chickens which have been reared in reprehensible conditions?
As others have said, 'free range' in most cases is similar to 'barn' but with access to the outside through flaps or openings in the barn. Due to bird flu, these openings have had to be closed, so the eggs no longer meet the formal definition of 'free range' and can't be labelled as such.
 
Milly finds out Clarence Court chickens have all day running around grassy land. Also the comment upthread about them being fed marigolds just to make the colour better sounds like it might be a bad thing, but i am reading it is in fact a good thing. Marigolds are good for chickens....as to whether it is true Clarence court feeds them Marigolds, I have no idea. But they are still my go-to egg brand.

 
Also the comment upthread about them being fed marigolds just to make the colour better sounds like it might be a bad thing, but i am reading it is in fact a good thing. Marigolds are good for chickens....as to whether it is true Clarence court feeds them Marigolds,

Somewhere around the time of Noah, when chickens were kept in chicken wire pens and a family could make a comfortable living off 200 or so hens (one of the rehabilitation suggestions after WW2 for returning soldiers), marigolds and ground Spanish sweet pepper were used, amongst other things, to colour eggs (and canaries). Today - that might only add several pence to the cost of each egg.......................

If anything is added at all, apart from zeaxanthin in maize/prairie meal etc., as part of the ration, synthetic carotenoids are added. I am unsure if the trade name still exists, but back a ways one of the common ones was Egemon (egg-em-on). The big name in carotenoids today - Carophyll.
 
It looks like Clarence Court does not do this?

https://www.clarencecourt.co.uk/faqs/

I suspect that it is an uncommon thing these days - in any poultry feed - it just adds cost for next to no return. That said, I have just checked the label on a sack of breeder pellets here and they have citranaxanthin added specifically as a colourant. (This is odd as breeder pellets are for feeding to birds that are to produce viable eggs for incubation, not for us to eat.)

Poultry feed, all but breeder feeds, used to be labelled ACS - a coccidiostat (usually amprolium) was routinely added, but any additions beyond vitamins/minerals is a rare thing these days. Turkey feeds used to be ABH (?) - anti-blackhead drug added, but I've not seen that in more than umpteen years.

I don't eat many eggs but memory says that yolks used to be far more orange than they are now, but I could be mis-remembering.

As for what CC feed - the marigold and paprika in the diet is at a level higher than only vitamins and minerals. I have seen this many times and when you look at the actual addition rates, they are minute, but allow them to claim that they are there. Maize will be the major source of colourant in all probability - just take a look at maize-fed chickens in supermarkets - they are "bright yellow".
 
As others have said, 'free range' in most cases is similar to 'barn' but with access to the outside through flaps or openings in the barn. Due to bird flu, these openings have had to be closed, so the eggs no longer meet the formal definition of 'free range' and can't be labelled as such.

I think, given what I value, I had better avoid supermarket eggs and other poultry products completely, free range or barn, bird flu or no bird flu, flaps open or flaps closed. I don't know about "organic", it's hard to know what that really means. And the same for produce from farmers' markets. Thank goodness it's easy to live without eggs and chicken meat!
 
I think, given what I value.....................

I hope that you use no pig or any other poultry product then.
Pigs have a far better time in the UK than they have had in the recent past, those abroad far less so. I very much doubt they have proportionally as much room as chickens for a lot of the time though.
Most milk is produced from cows housed in very cramped conditions for at least a few months of the year too, as the ground is too wet/soft in most areas, some herds are even housed 24-7-365.
 
Milly finds out Clarence Court chickens have all day running around grassy land. Also the comment upthread about them being fed marigolds just to make the colour better sounds like it might be a bad thing, but i am reading it is in fact a good thing. Marigolds are good for chickens....as to whether it is true Clarence court feeds them Marigolds, I have no idea. But they are still my go-to egg brand.


Can't see the date on that but i think illegal today, possibly ok if they're netted?
 
I hope that you use no pig or any other poultry product then.
Pigs have a far better time in the UK than they have had in the recent past, those abroad far less so. I very much doubt they have proportionally as much room as chickens for a lot of the time though.
Most milk is produced from cows housed in very cramped conditions for at least a few months of the year too, as the ground is too wet/soft in most areas, some herds are even housed 24-7-365.

I don't eat pig but I do drink milk and I'd find it harder to give up milk than poultry products, but if there is no solution, then so be it. What does "organic" mean w.r.t. milk?
 
I hope that you use no pig or any other poultry product then.
Pigs have a far better time in the UK than they have had in the recent past, those abroad far less so. I very much doubt they have proportionally as much room as chickens for a lot of the time though.
Most milk is produced from cows housed in very cramped conditions for at least a few months of the year too, as the ground is too wet/soft in most areas, some herds are even housed 24-7-365.
Indeed, in Alsace we were cutting wood in a dairy and the cows don't even go outside, they wander around in a barn and when their udders are full they know when and how to walk onto this robomilker so they can be relieved of the discomfort. Clever process but ultimately it looked like a shit life for the cows.
 
Organic as a general term means exposed to only essential medicaments and suchlike and free from exposure to/being fed with genetically modified materials.

Clever process but ultimately it looked like a shit life for the cows.

Cows are like us - a lot of the time they prefer a confortable place to vegetate with food and water immediately to hand.
In the UK, dairy cows absolutely race to be under cover when the end of grazing and good weather come to an end, and they race to be out when the weather turns and the grass is growing again. Plenty of YouTube videos of both on YouTube - try Tom Pemberton.

Robot-milked cows GENERALLY produce more milk than ones put through a parlour......
 


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