Donna Fezler
GCR
Jacksonville, IL
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PLTRYNWS Poultry Health, Production and Management News
> [mailto:PLTRYNWS@SDSUVM.SDSTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of Robert Plamondon
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 10:44 AM
> To: PLTRYNWS@SDSUVM.SDSTATE.EDU
> Subject: FW: Free-range eggs and nutritional differences
>
>
> > The sustainable ag list can't help with the egg composition
> > difference between true free-range and factory farm eggs. Anybody
> > know if there is a nutritional difference?
>
> I don't know if any work has been done on this since the
> 1940s. I didn't
> jot down the reference, but in one poultry textbook from the
> 1940s it was
> reported that birds on pasture or other range with lots of
> green feed laid
> eggs with elevated levels of many vitamins, including vitamin
> A and most of
> the B vitamins. Many of these were doubled compared to hens kept in
> confinement. I don't remember if vitamin D was elevated in
> the egg or not,
> but of course the birds use ultraviolet light to synthesize D. (It's
> tempting to speculate that vitamin D levels are responsible
> for thicker
> eggshells, but there are other possibilities, including that
> the eggshells
> aren't thicker at all -- you just see fewer checks because
> direct-to-consumer eggs don't get banged around as much as ordinary
> commercial eggs.)
>
> Because hens like lush green grass, and lush green grass is full of
> linolenic acids (or so I'm told by the beef graziers), I wonder if
> free-range eggs aren't just as good in that respect as those
> of hens fed
> special Omega-3 diets.
>
> The other thing of note about putting chickens out on range is that
> cannibalism and coccidiosis problems tend to vanish with
> free-range birds
> with access to range. This was reported in all the old
> poultry books, back
> when everyone had tried it both ways.
>
> Since the table in that 1940s book whose name I can't recall
> had exactly the
> same nutritional values for confined hens as are on the
> "Nutrition Facts"
> panel of an egg carton, I wonder just how OLD most of the basic
> egg-nutrition research is. Not that being old makes it
> invalid, but our
> concerns have shifted.
>
> There are a lot of opportunities for inexpensive research
> here, I would
> think, especially if we ditch the doomed-to-disappointment
> yarded-house
> model and stick portable colony houses onto existing cow and
> sheep pastures.
>
> When you expect the hens to pay for all the land and fencing
> themselves, the
> economics only make sense if you shoehorn in too many hens
> per acre. If
> they're sharing it with ruminants they don't have to pay all the rent
> themselves, and overstocking means they wreck the pasture for
> everybody
> else. By my calculations, adding 50 hens per acre to
> existing pastures
> ought to bring 1000 dozen eggs and $1000 profit per acre per
> year and leave
> the pasture and ruminants in better shape than before. This
> doesn't even
> count the four tons of manure per acre -- manure of a type
> that's not only
> good for the grass, but is often used as livestock feed. Nor
> does it count
> the fly- and parasite-control provided by the bug-hungry
> hens. Adding $1000
> per-acre profit is something that can get a grazier's
> attention, as is the
> idea of having a product that can be sold every day of the
> year. Another
> thing that makes the concept attractive is that most graziers
> have more
> pasture than they'd ever put chickens on, so if there's ever
> a problem with
> parasite buildup they have clean range they can shift the
> birds to. People
> with "free-range" operations built around permanent houses
> tend to be put
> out of business by pathogen buildup because they can't solve
> their problems
> with a tractor and a tow chain.
>
> The opportunities for cut-rate research are almost endless,
> since you start
> by using a different department's pastures -- and budget, if
> you get the
> proposal right!
>
> -- Robert
>
>
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