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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Eggs & Chicken
What claims can you believe with eggs? I know that cage free, free range, free nested, etc. often mean nothing. What do you buy? Are there any claims that are believable?
Also, as far as chicken I only have a couple options available to me. One is a local producer but I think their animal treatment can be questionable (Foster Farms), the other is BARE chicken, but it comes halfway across the nation to reach me. Which way would you go?
Actually, we have a meat processor about 30 minutes away and they have their own butcher shop. This next week I'm going to check it out and find out how much they know about where their stuff comes from and maybe I can stock up there once a month or so.
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Re: Eggs & Chicken
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I prefer to buy both being certified humane.
I have a hard time believing that in Oregon you only have two options of chickens! I really don't care for chicken much so I'm not real savvy on local options but I know we have quite a few.
As for eggs, I often buy them from the local feed store. They aren't certified anything but they're just from local farms. Otherwise I buy Steibr Farms brown eggs, which are certified humane and local in Yelm.
Repost from the more recent post today about eggs:
I wish the organic label had some effect on how animals are treated but it doesn't. Organic means the chickens aren't given artifical horomones, or antibiotics, and they're fed organic feed (i.e, no pesticides or GMO in their feed). However, this means they can still be squished into tiny pens, never see the outdoors, and be fed organic corn feed. Chickens, as well as all the other animals that we force to eat corn like cows and pigs, are not natural corn eaters. Real chicken food is forage (bugs, lizards, etc..) and bits of grass.
"Free range" means that the chickens must have access to the outdoors. That access is very restricted. Their huge pens, which contain hundreds of chickens smooshed together, have a very small door to a strip of enclosed grass outside, and that door isn't open until the chickens are ~5 weeks old. By then the chickens are already set in their ways and don't even notice the door is there, so they don't use it. "Cage free" means the hens aren't enclosed in battery cages, which are cages that are so small the bird can't stand up, turn around, or spread its wings. However, the hens are usually keep in the same small pens with hundreds of other chickens, with nesting boxes along eat side that also provide access to their food, so the hens usually sit in their nesting box and eat, and make eggs, and eat and poop, and make eggs, until the end.
The only way to know how the chickens eggs come from are raised is to know how someone raised them. I get our eggs from our local farmer's market. Go to localharvest.org to find one near you. Let me tell you, our eggs come from happy chickens. They roam the whole horse & pig pastures, grazing on grubs and bits of grass, have a coop like the Taj Mahal, and live long lives before they become the chicken meat that the farmer sells. Which I don't buy, I am also a vegetarian.
I'm not in a big city. We don't have a co-op nearby. For grocery stores I have Fred Meyer (Kroger for most of the nation) and Thriftway. Thriftway is where I do the majority of my shopping because they are locally owned. They sell southern grown chicken (not an option), BARE chicken (grown in Michigan or something like that), and Foster Farms, which is Oregon and Washington grown but known for being so-so for animal ethics. I have checked with the local meat market, Fishers, but the guy behind the counter said the chicken was from Foster Farms.
Well yes, if you shop at Kroger and other mainstream stores your options would be limited. I'm not sure what I'd choose of those options, probably the BARE.
Check Craigslist in your area. I've found local chickens raised on small family farms sold on CL, as well as eggs. Ask your feed store if they know of any local chicken farms.