Why Our Hens Aren't Vegetarian Fed

Stand in the egg aisle for a minute and count how many cartons say "100% vegetarian fed." It's usually printed right next to a drawing of a hen standing in green grass.

Meanwhile, out in our orchard on any summer morning, a hen is sprinting across the grass with a beetle in her beak and three of her sisters chasing her for it. 

That's a chicken eating what a chicken eats. And it's the reason you'll never see "vegetarian fed" on a carton of our eggs.

Chickens were never vegetarians

Chickens are omnivores, and anyone who has kept them for more than a week knows it. They eat seeds and greens, sure. They also eat grasshoppers, grubs, worms, slugs, and beetles. 

That isn't a flaw we're working around. It's how the bird is built. A hen scratches the ground because that's where the protein lives.

So when a label brags that a hen never ate any of that, it's worth asking what kind of life made that possible.

What "vegetarian fed" actually tells you

The label means the hen's feed had no animal ingredients in it. There's an understandable reason people like that. Conventional poultry feed is allowed to contain rendered animal protein, and a lot of shoppers would rather not think about where that came from. Next to that, "vegetarian" sounds clean.

But think about it from the hen's side. A bird with real access to the outdoors is going to eat bugs. The only reliable way to promise she ate nothing but plant feed is to keep her away from the ground where the bugs are.

So in practice, "vegetarian fed" usually describes a hen that lives indoors. The farm picture on the carton is doing a lot of work.

The amino acid the label doesn't mention

Chickens need an amino acid called methionine. Their bodies can't make it, so it has to come from food. Feathers are especially rich in it.

When hens run short, poultry scientists see poor feathering, feather pecking, and in bad cases, hens turning on each other. A corn-and-soy diet tends to come up short on methionine, which is why conventional feed mills add a synthetic version.

Even the USDA organic program, which bans slaughter byproducts in organic poultry feed, still allows synthetic methionine: up to 2 pounds per ton of feed for laying hens. It has been debated for years, because a strictly plant-based organic ration has a hard time meeting the hen's needs without it.

A beetle doesn't need a supplement. It's just food.

Our hens have a job in the orchard

Our flock rotates through the orchard here. They fertilize as they go, scratch up and aerate the soil, and eat a lot of the insects that go after our fruit trees.

The timing matters. Codling moth larvae, the worms you find in a wormy apple, crawl out of the fruit and drop to the orchard floor to find a place to pupate. Right where the hens are scratching. Fallen fruit gets picked over too. 

Hens aren't a magic pest-control button, though. Researchers at Michigan State found about 25 to 30 percent less plum curculio damage in apple rows with chickens one year, then no significant difference the next, and no clear effect on codling moth. Hens are one tool in a whole system, alongside. We're a no-spray farm, and the flock is a big part of how that works.

And yes, they get meat scraps

Our hens also get meat scraps from the kitchen.  They lose their minds over it.

People sometimes wince at this. It's protein, and it's food that would otherwise go in the trash.

We're careful about it. We don't feed raw poultry, because bird flu and other diseases can travel that way, and protecting the flock comes first. 

What to look for on an egg carton

A quick cheat sheet for the next time you're in that aisle:

• "Vegetarian fed": No animal ingredients in the feed. In practice, it usually means the hens didn't spend much time outside.
• "Cage-free": The hens weren't in cages. It doesn't mean they went outdoors. They can roam a barn and never see grass.
• "Organic": Certified organic feed, no slaughter byproducts in it, and outdoor access is required. How much outdoor time that really means varies a lot by farm.
• What pasture changes: A Penn State study found eggs from hens on pasture had twice the vitamin E and more than double the omega-3s of eggs from caged hens on commercial feed. Those pastured hens still got feed too. The grass and bugs were the extra.
• The best label: A farmer you can ask, "Can I see where your hens live?"

Why we do it this way

We could buy a vegetarian layer ration, keep the girls in a tidy barn, and put a nice word on the carton. Plenty of people would buy it.

But we started this farm to eat food we understand. A hen that spends her day in the orchard eating bugs, scratching in the soil, and fighting over last night's leftovers is a hen living like a hen. The deep orange yolk is just the part you get to see. 

A farmer has nothing to hide. Come see for yourself.