The Humane Society of the United States quest for an egg-free America;
If Washington voters were to approve it, this measure would make it illegal for Washington farmers to raise egg-laying hens in cages. Additionally, regular eggs would be banned from grocery stores.
[…] HSUS is the only cash contributor to the campaign so far—putting $150,000 of its donors’ money into the campaign in January.
Just to be clear, my post was not advocating messing with the free market. I was mostly just lamenting the fact that many in North America have zero interest in quality food, and are more interesting in the quantity of food they can get for the lowest price.
Caged chickens, with the lousy quality eggs they produce, are just a market response to that demand.
If you buy cheap meat you can always improve it with marinades, spices, and sauces as KevinB as noted (slow cooking works wonders too). But there’s not much you can do with a flavourless egg.
I have plenty of customers for my free range eggs, in fact they almost get in fights trying to get onto my customer list!
sasquatch said “You must have the only laying hens in Antarctica….no coyotes……Yeah, I think you live in fantasyland…”
I don’t know what on earth that’s supposed to mean. We’ve got plenty of coyotes, and raccoons too. Coyotes are easy to keep out, raccoons are little bastards and you have to be on the lookout for them. Overall my chickens are very happy, and their eggs beat out any cage chicken egg by a mile.
What does a free range chicken eat at -20? Seriously how can free range raised on feed taste different? Just asking.
My neighbour had a pet chicken. Put a sealer ring around it’s neck so it would feel pretty. I don’t think it suited the chicken, it hung itself on a nail.
There was a serious assault on eggs, in the 70s, when it was revealed the yolks contain cholesterol. Pork also contains cholesterol, so my favourite breakfast was declared dangerous to my health. People persisted with this nonsense for more than a decade, until a successful ad campaign, and some new studies, tokk eggs off the breakfast black list. Bacon, on the other hand, just broke those barriers by being irresistable.
I’ve been inside several large egg farms, and they really are sickening. The cages are too small for the chickens to turn around in. They dont even support themselves, so their legs whither. The average lifespan for an egg producing hen is about one year. They live in a state of terror, and even a loud noise, or a stranger walking past them can scare them to death. I haven’t seen one for years, so I don’t know if they’ve improved since then. They bottom line is, you can’t produce eggs on the same scale, if you give them room to move around.
They are just chickens, after all. They’re a creation of man, for human consumption. I can agree with lessening their suffering, but trying to free them from bondage, completely, would virtually be the end of the species.
The HSUS is little more than a people hating cult stocked with well heeled by inheritance female cranks and their aged actress front people.
coach excellent point regarding the cholesterol scare for eggs. I’ve been eating an egg a day my entire life and when last checked my cholesterol was just fine. Back then it was cholesterol in eggs, now its global warming, there’s always something.
For the non-chicken farmers in the audience, chickens that are used in cages are one of several special breeds that are engineered to be very docile, and are designed to be extremely productive and efficient for about 1 year, under carefully controlled temperatures and light schedules. Indeed the breeders of these chickens will even provide you with a “data sheet” that almost reads like the data sheet for a transistor, include specs on feed conversion rates, graphs of output versus temperature, etc.
These chickens are not as tough as the more traditional breeds when used in free range operations, although they are extremely gentle birds. The tradition breeds (Rhode Island Red etc.) always outlive the engineered breeds, they can handle cold better, etc.
So if you are free-ranging your birds and you use the correct breeds, all will be well. I have seen some people try to free-range the cage breeds and then complain that the birds don’t do that well. That’s hardly a surprise.
We have a few Araucanas that have been remarkable (blue coloured egg shell), and they keep going year after year. Tough as nails.
The difference between free range and caged eggs is about $2-$3/dozen. I’m always amazed that people are not prepared to spend that little extra to get a vastly superior product. What can you do. Beware of “free run” eggs, they are not the same as “free range”, but the suppliers will try to charge the same prices as free range.
Speedy, even in winter you can give birds feed that makes a pretty good tasting egg. Of course summer is best, and we rotate ours on grass so that they eat lots of the green stuff, bugs, worms, etc. This is what makes a really perfect egg, very high in beta carotene, thick dark yolk….damn I’m getting hungry!
“As I’ve always understood it, noodles made without eggs are pasta, while noodles made with eggs are egg noodles.”
~Iowa Jim
I make my own pasta.
It has eggs in it, just like the Italians make it.
http://tinyurl.com/648hdlv
This is how I’ve made it for decades and how Italians have made it from time immemorial.
Pasta is made with eggs.
When it comes to eggs, I far prefer free range eggs although unfortunately my supply dried up after a coyote ate most of the hens at the farm where I got my eggs. So, my free range eggs recently have been ostrich – massive ommelete, Emu and Peacock. All interestingly flavored and far more fun to eat than bland supermarket eggs. However, it’s a bit easier to grab a dozen eggs at the grocery store than pry one away from a surprisingly aggressive Emu. (People raise exotic birds around where I live likely for the Vancouver restaurant market).
Hens are basically egg laying machines and I don’t think they really care whether they’re in a cage or running around a farmers field. There’s not much processing power in their miniscule wetware. The morons who are trying to ban chicken raising have IQ’s of the same order as chickens and why people support such idiocy is beyond me.
hard day trampling in the vineyard and busy now but i’ll be glad to explain how to hypnotize chickens first thing in the morning…..on this thread.
i’m sharing this ’cause i like ken the kulak’s act.
TJ- I barely remember, but we had a few chickens when I was a kid. They were completely free to roam, and were protected by the rooster(s). I remember one lived to be more than 10 years old. Her last egg was the size of a robin egg. At certain times of the year, they’d eat june bugs, and the yolks would be very dark for a little while. We had a few Banthams for a while. They are entertaining. Those little roosters won’t even back down from a hawk.
I think some of you are confusing layers with broilers. Layers live in cages and broilers wander around freely in a big barn visiting with other broiler chickens all day long until they jump into your freezer courtesy of Safeway or whichever supermarket you patronize.
I do not doubt that free range layer eggs taste better than caged layer eggs as the free range ones pick up more goodies on the ground that become part of the egg. The coyote overhead can be tough though.
BTW, free range (in a good fence) broilers taste better than barn raised broilers, but take longer to get to the frying pan stage.
I’m sure Chickenman could provide the details or correct any errors I have made.
Noodles are made with eggs,pasta is made from durum wheat.The Italians get their durum mainly from Algeria and Canada.As a Sask farmer,I and others ,have been trying to get a durum milling and pasta plant established in Sask for years but the Canadian Wheat Board wont allow it as there is a mill in Quebec that must stay in business.
Again, pasta is made with eggs.
http://tinyurl.com/6hs5cgg
http://tinyurl.com/62pa8yg
By the way,I oten write “cant” without a ‘ for the same reason that lol doesnt have to be expanded.
coach nice story. My kids will grow up with similar tales.
Bantams can be feisty little critters you are absolutely correct. They seem to believe they are 10x the size they really are. I seen them easily terrorize grown adults.
One of our bantams mated with a broody Rhode Island Red and the result was a magnificent specimen of a rooster who does not attack.
loki, ostrich, emu and peacock eggs…you must be a connoisseur.
how chickens are made
http://tinyurl.com/4to3j8d
TJ- Just had remembered something that happened 50 years ago, mainly from hearing it from older brothers. A chicken hawk grabbed a chicken in our yard, and tried to fly off, but was having trouble lifting the full sized hen. The rest of the flock scattered in terror, except for one bantam rooster. He chased that hawk for 50 yards, until it finally let go of the hen(which recovered). The kids found the big leghorn rooster jammed between two rocks, where he had run in terror.
ken kulak..
i don’t particularly like being referred to as ‘chickenman’ ….
seriously…how would you like it if i got all ironic and funny haha about YOUR ruminations…and there are PLENTY of those my friend that wouldn’t suffer from a judicious though ironic bit of critical slice and dice…
but i digress…as usual of course but only to spare ‘kenny’ any embarrassment.
so of course because of ken kulak’s asshole remark about the ‘chickenman’ i am more than the least willing to divulge the secrets of chicken hypnotism ….
so go to your graves wondering why and how MAN can wreak the majick he can with our little feathered friends.
ken the kulak forsooth!…name sounds like a commissar of the soviet aesthetic…AFTER the airbrushing and the ink of revisionism is dry..
coach, fabulous story, and I can believe every word of it!
Anyway, my spelling and grammar have gone to pieces in my posts, so I should probably pack it in.
Here’s to free range chicken eggs, which does not mean the HSUS are in the right. Once they have banned caged hens (which is a goal that is not entirely without merit), they will then move on to trying to ban free range chickens too. That’s where the real problem lies – their ultimate goal is for all of us to be vegetarians, living on grass and tofu.
and coach?
please…cut it out…we gotsa to be real here…capiche?
Why? Are we under oath?
loki, ostrich, emu and peacock eggs…you must be a connoisseur.
No TJ, just lucky enough to have inlaws who are into ranching and know a lot of local farmers.
I like the fact that you’re selling free range eggs which I don’t mind paying extra for. My favorite were green (and occasionally blue) in color and incredibly tasty. One of my wifes cousins decided to “rescue” some commercial laying chickens from their cages and put them in with the other chickens. They laid large white eggs which just didn’t measure up to the green eggs. Also, they didn’t seem to do very well around coyotes and were the first to disappear probably because the indigenous chickens had far more experience in hiding from coyotes. Never did figure out a way of getting the coyotes despite hours of lying in wait in a barn overlooking the chicken coop ready to blow apart any coyote that dared venture near.
I still want to know what came first, the headless chicken or the banned egg.
lol !!!
john begley, you misunderstood, I was not referring to you. I was hoping that someone who is in the business of raising either chickens or had laying hens would comment.
Now, could you please relent about telling us your secret of chicken hypnosis?
BTW john, the term “kulak” is meant to be waving a red flag in front of the Marxists, a form of protest to collectivist thinking so to speak.
oh…okay…sorry ken….i’m forever doing that…misconstruing….
anyway here we go..
method 1….take the chickens head and tuck it under one wing…then holding the wings swirl the bird in a circular tho horizontal direction within a 2 03 foot diameter…about a dozen times will do the trick…set chicken down and hey presto she’s immobile with her head still stuck under her wing…
method 2….place chicken sitting on ground and force head down and forward to the ground directly ahead of our patient…then…take a 2 foot piece of straw(NOT hay not thick enough) from her beak outward to infinity straight ahead…remove hand holding our volunteer and presto digito she will stay there forever with her beady little eyes staring down the straw…
number two works better with my missus since she has a rather short neck…well…not short but certainly not swannish…
Boyar was styled as a rich landowner by the Bolsheviks and killed first. Most alleged Boyars were actually merely landed peasants….owning property was a capital offence….to the Bolsheviks.
Then they targeted the “kulaks”…peasants with or without land……accused of hoarding grain etc. In actually the hoarding was merely grain set aside to eat until the next harvest and seed.
These alleged “hoards” were seized with the result that the peasants starved and no new crops were planted…..making for widespread famine even in the cities.
That’s why some of us regard the public sector unions as Bolsheviks.
Thanks john, you are a gentleman and a scholar.
sasquatch, bang on. My wife’s gpa and his brother had a flour mill with a few local Russians as full time workers and some Tatar tribesmen workers during peak times. The Tatars did not want to work full time. When the Bolsheviks came along they confiscated the mill and told the brothers that they had to manage it. Well, not long after they took a powder for parts elsewhere after a radish warned them that they were on a list.
My gpa and his two brothers each had their own land, about 65 dessiatines (175 acres)of crop and pasture land. My gpa saw the handwriting on the wall and left as soon as he could. If you have read my comments in the past, you will recall what happened to his two brothers. They were termed “kulaks” and enemies of the people and sent to labour camps. One died there from overwork and the other was shot in 1937.
It becomes personal when a few NDPs here in Saskatchewan have commented in the past about how farmers should not own their own land.
The socialist world is not hypothetical to me and Jack Layton and his pals suck.
my family calls profligacy “eating your seed corn”….
coach at February 24, 2011 10:22 PM:
“The bottom line is, you can’t produce eggs on the same scale, if you give them room to move around”.
Really?? Unless I’ve been out of the farming loop for too long, I’ve never heard of such a thing. One hen produces one egg once daily, and I’ve never heard any variation whether they are “free range” or cooped up. But then I’m not up on the most recent breakthoughs in “egg science” — are industrial hens producing two or three eggs daily these days?
And just to be clear about “free range” — I still used to gather them into a coop at night, and the hens came indoors to lay in their respective nests. Also supplemented their diet with grain, calcium (oyster shell) to harden the shells, etc.
And loki: “My favorite were green (and occasionally blue) in color”
Yep, and I liked the polka-dot (and occasionally striped) eggs, which my hens laid during Easter. We put our rabbit bucks in with our hens the week before Easter and they would mate, producing multi-coloured Easter Bunny eggs just in time for the holidays!
Seriously though loki, the solution to coyotes and such is a couple good dogs — never been on a rural property that didn’t already have them.
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