No difference between pasture raised chicken eggs and caged chicken eggs.

[Scotty from BI]

I know this is going to send some into a total frenzy, but I ran across this lab analysis of eggs comparing eggs produced by pastured chickens and caged chickens, all other variants being the same and it came to the conclusion that there was no significant health advantage to eating one egg over the other. One thing I didn't see was if the caged chickens were in commercial cages indoors with no exposure to sun or confined to outdoor runs which could be interpreted as caged. It also does not address quality of life for the chickens just the nutritional breakdown of the eggs. Anyway, interesting reading which might make you feel a bit better about confining your chickens into runs vs allowing them to free range. Also, might be curious to know if anyone who reads this might change from free range to confining their chickens since confined chickens are much safer from predators than free rangers.
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/.../e3001d6a0e78b9e55c6f...]

 

[WindingRoad]

I know this is going to send some into a total frenzy, but I ran across this lab analysis of eggs comparing eggs produced by pastured chickens and caged chickens, all other variants being the same and it came to the conclusion that there was no significant health advantage to eating one egg over the other. One thing I didn't see was if the caged chickens were in commercial cages indoors with no exposure to sun or confined to outdoor runs which could be interpreted as caged. It also does not address quality of life for the chickens just the nutritional breakdown of the eggs. Anyway, interesting reading which might make you feel a bit better about confining your chickens into runs vs allowing them to free range. Also, might be curious to know if anyone who reads this might change from free range to confining their chickens since confined chickens are much safer from predators than free rangers.
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/.../e3001d6a0e78b9e55c6f...]

I admit I didn't read the article. No need to flog me I can do that myself. Can you tell me who funded the research. It wasn't by chance the National Egg Foundation. Don't know if that is a real entity or not. But you know what I mean.

ETA: Kind of old research. References from 1951 really.

 

[centrarchid]

i am reading in scientist mode.

 

[JaeG]

Thanks for sharing. That's really interesting.

 

[SueT]

There's a huge difference in taste.

 

[sourland]

Any flavor analysis ?

 

[Brahmachicken240]

Just had a wee scan through it, very interesting info

 

[IamRainey]

My chickens are raised in a run and I have no hesitation to do that because it keeps them safe. Meanwhile, they have plenty of room to move around I "forage" them greens every day along with their balanced feed and I make sure they get their share of mealworms too. They have a good life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Whether their eggs and the eggs of a caged bird are nutritionally equivalent makes no difference to me. I still want eggs from chickens who are able to be chickens and who will live out their lives well fed and loved even when there are no more eggs.

 

[centrarchid]

Need to see the NCLP&MT (Anderson, 2009b). Diet can impact differences or lack there of a lot. Area birds had to forage is way too low / bird density too high for birds to cherry pick. It reads like birds either were not moved or they had little impact on vegetation. I would like to read samples of crop contents to get a handle on how much vegetation the birds were actually consuming. Birds could have been out scratching around, but consuming very little vegetation. In my setting, vegetation represents a large part of what the truly free-range birds consume. My partial free-range birds that seldom go more than a hundred feet from feeder eat very little vegetation, they just go looking for bugs that probably provide less energy than the effort needed to consume them.

 

[centrarchid]

If experiment carried out the way I think it was, then you would not expect changes in flavor of eggs.