Your Guide to Grocery-Store Egg Labels: Free Range Eggs: Part 3

Welcome back to part three of "your guide to grocery-store egg labels." This week, we will be discussing what "free-range" actually means. 

There is a reason why there is now a divide between free-range and pasture-raised. The reason why there is a divide between the two is because of how the USDA guidelines are interpreted/portrayed. The key phrase that gets the most debate over is "allowed access to the outdoors." Hopefully you can see how ambiguous this statement is:) Depending on your interpretation, that could mean that a hole in the wall of the chicken house could classify your operation as "free-range." It also could mean that several large doors are opened to let the birds out. Essentially, it depends on how honest the farmer wants to be about their product. 

Why do some eggs that are classified as "free-range" look just like cage-free/caged eggs when I crack them open? 

The first answer to that question could be that those eggs came from a farm where the only access to the outdoors was a hole in the wall. Another reason could also be caused by a lack of grazing space. Since the most efficient way to get the most eggs per hen is to have a fixed building, a lot of large free-range farms will take the cage-free housing system, and add doors on the sides of the barn that connect to a pasture. That only works for so long before the grass gets overgrazed, which then kills the grass. Since vegetation contains the pigments that cause egg yolks to get darker, having thousands of chickens on a used-to-be pasture only gives the chickens more space to hang out, but no dark yolks. 

Since my farm utilizes the fixed-barn style (mostly because the shape of our lawn doesn't allow for large portable pens to be used effectively), I have to pay close attention to the high-impact zones where grass gets grazed the most. I try to section off areas of grass for about a week's worth of grazing, then switch the fencing around for another section. You would probably be surprised at just how much grass 165 chickens can haul off in a week! Usually, a 5-6 inch tall paddock of grass (somewhere in the 100 ft x 50 ft size) gets grazed down to about 2 inches, and even 1/4 inch in the high-impact zone (usually under trees, or along the fence-line). Earlier this spring, there was a section of grass that I let get up to  2 ft tall, and it was an inch tall 2 days after allowing the chickens into that section. Who needs a lawn mower when you can just have a bunch of chickens do it for you? 

Stay tuned for the last part of this series, where we will talk about pasture-raised eggs!