Free Range?

Free Range Eggs

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago got me thinking. I don't actually read the newspaper or watch the news on TV. I call it the bad news. I'll never forget an interview I heard once with a psychologist who was not surprised at the the number of people who struggle through their day having been woken by their clock radio telling them all the bad things that are happening in the world.

Wow I can see how people can digress in this blog thing.

What are Free Range Eggs?

I should have the answers. Some of the facts are relatively simple:

Certified Organic eggs are always free range. Something that I find people still don't understand. There are 7 different certifiers and logos in Australia.

Free Range Farmers Association , FREPA , Humane Choice, and others have strict regulations limiting numbers between 750 to 1500 hens per hectare. Check the Sustainable Table's site for a good comparison table.

Stocking rate is important but doesn't actually take into account grazing management.

Certified Organic producers are independently audited and inspected every year. As for the others, it's not so clear.

Eggs that say Free Range but don't have any Accreditation Logo could be anything.

But even these facts aren't that simple to find, or to understand, and I'll admit I might not even have the facts all right, and I am an egg farmer.

No wonder the consumers are bewildered and choice has made a super complaint (great name) about the situation.

Understandably producers are scrambling to identify themselves, with new labels such as Pasture Ranged Organic, and Beyond Organic. But I'm not sure if this helps or just adds to the confusion. I mean what exactly is beyond organic anyway?

If you're waiting for my wise conclusion you might have to wait till I'm older and more cynical because as I heard Tim Minchin say recently to his old Uni;

"A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like arse-holes, in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this… but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.

We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others.
Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat.
Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privilege."

I think these may be some of the wisest words I've heard in a while, and what this means to me is that I don't have the answers, I'm still trying to figure it all out.

I could tell you that the best thing to do would be to get to know you're local farmer, shop at farmers markets, do you're research, even visit the farms you buy from, and these things probably will help you make an informed choice.

Or I could say that you should raise your own chickens and that is the ultimate way to know where you're eggs come from.

BUT I don't believe I should tell you to do anything. Do what you want. If it's important to you you will try, like me, to figure it out for yourself and not be told what is best for you.

Well what a rant. When you sit down and start writing like this it can certainly open up a can of worms, but as the earth would not exist without worms, maybe that's a good thing.

Cheers,

Farmer Bren

Electranet

Sorry about the typos in my last blog. I have since run it through spellcheck and found 10, (I can hear Kate cringing. She hates typos). But i will happily admit that I'm not a good speller and that I believe  spelling should actually be phonetic.

Thanks for all your comments, it was great to get so many for a newbie and I have posted replies to most of them in the last blog. I think that is what I will try to do if I can think of a direct reply and if not the questions will go onto a list that I will refer to for future blogs.

One last housekeeping thing and that is the blog layout. I'm not convinced it will stay, mostly because I can't get the photos as big as I'd like them, however there are some very cool features of this layout that you can try; On the upper left corner where is says classic there are another 6 layouts you can choose from to view the blog. My favourite is flipcard. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Ok, enough housekeeping.

I wish the clip above was a bit clearer and that I could have got a wider angle but I hope that it can still give you a bit of an idea of setting up of an enclosure for 200 chickens.

We have used electranets/electric netting/electric poultry nets, for close to 10 years now.

 I can't imagine keeping free range chickens without them. 

More later..

Cheers,

Farmer Bren.