Chickens are NOT Vegetarians

Are your chickens fed a vegetarian diet?"
 "ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

Happy Chickens!

We want to avoid unnaturally feed for our chickens.

 Not everyone is aware since the marketing is so contrary these days.... but chickens are omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals. Ask any farmer with a flock of pastured poultry how much their hens squawk in a frenzied delight at the discovery of a worm, lizard or snake. A full-scale party in the hen house breaks out in the barnyard when a hen nabs a coveted live morsel.

Chickens are notorious cannibals, even pecking injured flockmates to death. This is one of the reasons commercial chicken operations de-beak their birds when they stuff them into cages and buildings by the tens of thousands. This is rarely a problem when birds are raised properly.
Our birds will get worms, bugs, weeds and vegetables and sometimes even flowers!  By the way, that is a dirty little trick the commercial laying hens get to bump up the color of their yolks... adding dried marigold flowers to the feed.  Looks great, but means nothing.

Truth is, chickens running around in the sun, absorbing sun light, eating a varied diet, produce a naturally bright colored orange egg yolk.  The healthier the chicken, the healthier the egg!
I was introduced to a Purdue Farms commercial in a store recently which emphasized their chickens were fed an all-vegetarian diet.

A vegetarian chicken is NOT an "All Natural Chicken", it is an abused and unhealthy chicken. 

The marketing teams are creative and understandably so.

However, the truth is this:  Commercial chicken operations used to feed their poultry animal by-products including .... chicken manure!)  Now that it is discovered that isn't the way to go, they now advertise vegetarian diet as a way to say they aren't feeding their chickens this very yucky stuff!

Did you know,  the poop from vegetarian chickens is being fed to cattle in both the beef and dairy industries. Why? It's a cheap form of food. However, the practice was prohibited with the advent of Mad Cow disease. Turned out that this practice polluted the animal by-products used in poultry feed and eventually infected said bovine with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and potentially infected humans as well. So under the guise of food safety, our chickens must now be vegetarians.

So next time you see "all vegetarian feed"  on your poultry products (yes, even if you buy them at Whole Foods or they are Certified Organic), remember you are contributing to unnatural agricultural practices implemented solely for bigger profits in the industrial food production complex and not to the benefit of the livestock or more importantly, your health.

This is "cage-free" and "free-roaming".

But there is a solution.  More and more people are finding their local farmers and getting eggs from a source they can actually visit and see for themselves!  Or even better, others are starting their own backyard flock of hens.  Even in small yards, many times it is possible to have chickens (minus the rooster!)

 

So look around and see if you can find a farmer in your community who is raising a healthy flock.  You'll be surprised at the difference and enjoy eating healthy food.

 

        

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. - Genesis 9:3