Do you give your hens hormones?

We do not. And the use of hormones is illegal for anyone raising poultry. Unfortunately, that is not the case with other types of farm animals.

Do you give your hens antibiotics?

No.

This practice was adopted by factory farms to deal with the constant filth and disease that is their chicken filled warehouses. They will typically treat healthy hens with antibiotics as a prophylactic measure.

Our barns are airy, uncrowded, clean and safe. If in the rare circumstance a hen is discovered to have a health issue requiring antibiotics, and this is very rare, she will be segregated from the main flock and treated. Her eggs will not go into our cartons until she is fully recovered and off any medications.

I’ve read bad things about male chicks. What happens at Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs?

To fully answer this important question about male chicks, we’d like to explain a little bit of how our farms work.

We are deeply committed to how our free range hens are treated from the day they are born. We take ownership of our hens when they are delivered to us at 16 or so weeks old. Prior to joining us at our farms, these hens are hatched at a hatchery and raised by small family farms in free range pullet houses. The hatcheries which supply our hens are operated by companies who own the rights to the genetics of their hens. These hybrid breeds have been developed especially for egg-laying productivity and it is what makes commercial egg farming possible at the prices consumers currently enjoy. They are not bred to be suitable for meat as those are very different breeds. We do not have the resources or expertise to produce our own breed of egg laying hens, so we have to work with these hatcheries.

Once the chicks are hatched, they are sorted by gender. The female chicks will become egg laying hens and are transported at one day old to the pullet house. Unfortunately, there is no role for male chickens of this breed in egg farming. And, male chickens from laying breeds are not suitable for meat because they mature very slowly. Additionally, they cannot be kept with the hens. In a cage free or free range environment, the roosters tendency to fight would create a terrible, inhumane environment for hens. So, given that there is no viable market for the male chicks, the hatcheries euthanize them. To do this, the hatcheries use one of the practices recommended by the American Veterinary Medical Association. We do not have control over which practice they use and it varies depending on the hatchery. However, none of the practices are very appealing. We wish that there was an alternative, but there currently are no hatcheries available to us that produce chicks without male chick culling.

However, we do not believe that we can stand by idly and pass the blame onto hatcheries. They are producing chicks for farmers like us and so we must own some of the responsibility for current practices. As part of our commitment to the humane treatment of hens from the very beginning of their life, we are serious about doing our part to end this practice. We have spoken with company leaders at the hatcheries and advocated for the end of male chick culling. The hatchery/hen genetics industry is very consolidated with only a few companies worldwide. They are headquartered in Europe where there has been much greater political will to force change. For example, the German government has stated that male chick culling will be phased out in Germany over the coming years. Germany, the Netherlands, and the European Union, in partnership with the hatchery parent companies, are providing financial support to various university research efforts occurring in Europe. There are several in-egg technologies to sex the eggs, which are rapidly progressing in testing and we expect some of them to be in widespread use in the coming few years. We maintain contact with researchers at the University of Leipzig, Germany and Project In Ovo in the Netherlands and plan to offer financial support to them. Their work is focused on commercializing a prototype in-egg sexing technique.

In addition to working with researchers, we are working to partner with non-profits such as Compassion in World Farming to support their efforts around this issue. Finally, we are partnering with Unilever, who has taken a leadership role on this issue, to coordinate efforts and bring positive change to the U.S. We hope to hold a summit later this year with key U.S. players to ensure that we are all doing everything we can on the issue. Commercializing the technology and bringing it to the U.S. is going to require a team effort and we are taking a leadership role in this effort.

While we cannot change the entire egg industry at once, we are committed to building a sustainable business at a scale large enough to create meaningful progress in the way laying hens are raised and treated in the U.S. Currently, over 90% of eggs consumed in the U.S. are produced in horrific caged environments. We are optimistic that as consumers become more interested in how our food is produced we will continue to see improvements in the humane and ethical treatment of farm animals from their first day to their last.

What happens to sick or injured hens?

We rarely have this issue because our free range flocks are quite healthy and well cared for.

Nevertheless, our farmers keep an eye on their flocks all day long. Whenever we find a hen that is sick or injured, we segregate her, treat and then return her to the flock when she’s back to full health.

In general, we have far less challenges with disease and injury than conventionally raised, caged hens because we don’t overcrowd, the girls have access to the outdoors, fresh air and water, and can socialize with their hen cliques.

What happens to the hens when they’re too old to lay eggs?

To begin with, we have definitely thought long and hard about the best way to deal with our hens at the end of their laying days. There are several options to consider. First, we could keep them ourselves. In order to feed and house our retired laying hens for the remainder of their lives, we estimate that the cost of a dozen eggs would be at least $12.00 at the shelf. We feel that this would not be affordable for our consumers.

Additionally, it would prevent us from achieving our broader aim of building a sustainable business at a scale large enough to create meaningful change in the way laying hens are raised and treated in the U.S. The next option is adoption. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find a way to make this work either. We have found that there is some interest locally in adopting hens, but not nearly enough for us to move several thousand hens in time for the new flock to arrive. Our last option is for the hens to be sold for food. Even this option is not without difficulty because laying hens have far less meat than broiler hens which are bred specifically for that. Many commercial egg laying hens are simply euthanized and landfilled at the end of laying. As farmers, that seems terribly wasteful to us.

So, while we know some consumers will be unhappy to know that our hens go on to be used for food, we do feel it’s the most responsible thing to do. At the end of a flock’s natural laying cycle, we contract with several poultry transportation and processing companies to purchase our birds. These companies send crews to our farms to pick up the hens. The crews are trained and certified in the humane handling of poultry. At this point, the hens belong to that company, but we have worked with them to ensure that our birds are going to acceptable follow-on markets. There are currently two main markets for our birds with each receiving about half of the overall quantity. One is live poultry markets where consumers are able to select live birds for consumption. The other is a US federally inspected processing plant which specializes in processing “light poultry” including laying hens. This plant uses the latest technology to ensure that the hens are quickly and humanely slaughtered.

For consumers who want eggs from hens that are never slaughtered, our eggs will not be a suitable option. We encourage these consumers to raise their own hens for which there are excellent resources available online.

While it’s important for us to continue to move the bar on humane egg production, we also feel that it’s important to remember that over 90% of eggs consumed in the U.S. are produced in horrific caged environments. For those hens, their best day is the day when they are finally put out of their misery.

We believe Adele Douglass, the founder of Certified Humane, said it best, “Our hens only have one bad day.”

How many eggs does a hen lay per day?

It’s right around 1 per day for most. A flock will average around 307 eggs per hen over the first 52 weeks of laying. This will decrease a bit as the hens age.

Do you feed the hens corn or soy?

While our hens are Certified Free Range, and thus can spend most of their days foraging for bugs and tasty greens, they are not ruminants, like cows, and therefore cannot get 100% of their diet this way. Our supplemental feed does contain corn and soy. The soy provides our hens with the protein they need in their diets and the corn carbohydrates. There are also a significant number of other beneficial organic nutrients and minerals in our feed that help to keep the hens healthy, such as calcium. To learn more about the care we take in developing our feed mix please check out this blog post. We have never received any reports of corn or soy allergies being triggered by eating our organic eggs. But if you have soy allergies, or gluten sensitivity and questions of that nature, The American Egg Board website is a good resource. Their research suggests that despite some soy in hen feed, eggs should probably be considered gluten free and likely have undetectable levels of soy remaining in them. That said, it’s always wise to seek the advice of your own physician with anything related to allergies.

Do you debeak your hens?

We do follow a practice accepted and recommended by Certified Humane, our third-party animal welfare certifier, of mild beak trimming. This is not for our financial benefit, but for protecting the weakest members of our flocks. The goal of a correctly administered beak trim is to prevent a sharp hook from developing on the end of the beak. The scientific committee of Certified Humane determined that a very minor trim of the sharp tip of the beak on or before the chick is ten days of age is humane, and often more humane than leaving aggressive hens with a means to hurt other hens, no matter how much space available to them.

Our company is always looking for how to do things even better. Recently, we began transitioning to an infrared mild beak trim performed at the hatchery when the chicks are one day old. The benefits of this method include a more consistent and even trim, less stress for the hens because they don’t have to be caught and handled, and less risk of disease for the pullets transmitted from the beak trimming crews who visit multiple farms. We hope to fully convert to this method over the next few years as the hatcheries which service our small family farms upgrade their equipment.

A great resource for more detailed information about our standards can be found at Certified Humane’s website here.

What does free range really mean?

Free range means what it sounds like, which is during most times of the day and year, our hens are free to roam outside as they please. This is very different from Cage Free, which sounds good, and is better than being in a tiny cage, but still basically means that you are in a massive warehouse of a barn with hundreds of thousands of other hens, in floor to ceiling caged enclosures, with no access to the outdoors. So not exactly idyllic.

We do have to insure that our free range hens are safe from predators and disease from wild birds, so we don’t allow them outside if ground predators such as fox or coyote are seen in the immediate area. And during migratory bird season, we protect our birds from exposure to diseases such as avian mites or Avian Flu.

You can get more information about Free Range here.

Is it the same thing as cage free?

Not even close. Cage Free is rapidly becoming the new standard (though converting all of the factory farms from battery cages to cage free will take a decade or more) but it’s nothing like free range. In fact, it doesn’t even mean what it says. The hens are still packed into giant industrial scale warehouses with floor to ceiling cages (generally called “aviary systems”). The only difference is that they have a little more freedom of movement within the system. That’s not insignificant given how cruel the current battery cages are, but it’s a far cry from one of our “floor barns” where hens can go wherever they want, perch, hang out with pals, or go outside to forage for insects or dust bathe. Cage Free is just a factory farm with a slightly less cruel cage system than before. Learn more here.

Is that as good as pasture raised?

Pasture Raised is another term that has emerged in recent years. While there are no universal standards around it, in general, it means what it sounds like which is that hens have grass to forage on, just like Free Range. The debate comes in with respect to how much space is “enough” for hens, based on an average amount of square footage per hen. Our free range hens have an average of 2 sq. ft. per hen of pasture. But that’s for every hen in the flock. It is rare for more than 25% of the flock to be outside at any one time during the day, so then they would have 4 times that amount. Pasture Raised generally offers even more space than this, but that space does not come free. So the eggs will typically cost more as well. We think that we have found the right happy medium with Certified Humane Free Range that balances the needs of hens, farmers, and consumers. Learn more at this blog post.