Besides the fact that eggs are rich in nutrients, they also provide protein and build muscle, which is especially essential for those who have chosen a diet consisting mainly of vegetables.
In all honesty, eggs could be considered the perfect food. They’ve been a breakfast staple for many centuries…and for good reason. They are delicious, simple to prepare, and easy on the pocketbook, especially if you raise your own chickens.
But not all eggs are created equal, and depending on how the chicken is raised, one egg might not be equally tasty as the other. More importantly, you may not appreciate the way the chickens are actually being raised for grocery store eggs.
Easy on the pocketbook if you raise your own....excuse me while I sit in the corner and laugh! Good article, but clearly that statement assumes one isn't adding in the cost of the coop, the fencing, the feed, the time, the electricity to keep the water dish from freezing, etc....you can buy a lot of eggs for all that. Which is the miracle of modern commercial agriculture. Now, that said, no commercial egg beats a fresh home raised chicken egg for satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteI've been keeping hens for the past 5 years and I figure I'll break even sometime in 2035. I do enjoy fresh eggs, though - and so do my neighbors.
Delete13 years here. Wife likes to say you can buy a dozen for 99 cents to gig me. I just say not if they are out of that and toilet paper which you thought could not happen. Short of that I will never break even Kenny.
DeleteWhen I saw the "electricity to keep the water from freezing" I saw someone reaching... Eggs from my chickens who wondered around outside were better than those bought from the store.
DeleteIf you don't enjoy keeping chickens then don't do it, if the cost of eggs is the only thing that matters to you then don't do it. But if you want to keeping chickens is not difficult.
Agreed, keeping chickens isn't overly laborious but someone has to look after them every day.
DeleteHard to find pet sitters that will take care of chickens too.
my wife raises chickens and she hatches the eggs in the spring.... (other time of the year we eat them or sell them) She pays for all the feed and such by selling the chicks... most years she even shows a little profit. It does help that she has some very good bloodlines, and people are fighting over them when they come available.
ReplyDeleteWhat your wife does running her birds is smart business. My wife wanted chickens, but it was up to me to built the coop and a fenced home pen, pay for the feed, gather the eggs, manage their free-ranging and then she would give the eggs away at work!
DeleteWe have some acreage and I would take a 100 foot roll of light 2x4 fencing and circle off an area and let it all grow up in Johnson grass and other weeds until it was all up 3 to 4 feet high, Then in the morning I'd turn the girls in there and put them back in their home pen late in the evening. In less than a week 8 chickens who be looking at bare ground inside the pen full of weeds. Everything was gone. Grass, weeds, all the bugs and anything trying to sprout. Gone. And then they would go and eat their day's ration of chicken pellets and grain
one more thanks for this ongoing series
ReplyDeleteMy girls get the frolic, play and Rome on a half an acre..
ReplyDeleteEgg are delicious and the chicks are fun to watch
I buy my feed bulk. One ton of Milo at a time. Much cheaper than buying bagged.
ReplyDeleteAs a veterinarian with involvement in the commercial poultry industry, I can assure you that 'hormones' are NOT fed to chickens... no matter how many times folks print that lie. Antibiotics... yes, in some cases, and at some stages of production, but 'added hormones' are not a part of egg or broiler production. Never have been.
ReplyDeleteAgree that a 'home-grown' egg is superior - if only in appearance... I doubt that nutritionally, it's significantly different from one produced by caged layers.
Good info - thanks for the post.
DeleteThe free-range bird's eggs taste is better, yokes are a deeper yellow almost to an orange color and the yokes are thicker. Our bird's eggs would mostly grade higher than caged eggs.
DeleteI dunno about the cost thing. My chickens ate a lot of bugs. I mean a shit load. Also, being careful with the nitrogen content when I cleaned the coop it all went in my gardens. So, they gave me fresh eggs and kind a helped out around the farm too. I ate eggs about every day so from a health stand point I wonder if I saved any bucks there. A bird in a house and run will eat a lot of layin mash. I let mine run every day and mash consumption was cut in half. In close, they are pretty damn cool too.
ReplyDeleteQ: Why do you think an egg is chock full of cholesterol?
ReplyDeleteA: Because it takes a hell of a lot of it to make a chicken.
I try to eat more cholesterol; meat, eggs, and lots of dairy fat. If you don't eat it, your liver will have to synthesize it. Your brain is made out of cholesterol.
I can't tell anyone not to take a prescribed statin drug because that would be practicing medicine without a license. But there's no way I will ever take one.
True on all points.
DeleteOne mid-sized night crawler has more protein then a large chikin egg.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome.
One serious issue the article fails to address:
ReplyDelete* chickens are notorious omnivores.
Chickens eat anything.
An egg-carton proudly proclaiming 'vegetarian fed' is grossly misleading.
Chickens cannot thrive on a vegantarianist diet.
A key component of vegantarianist diets is soy; nearly all soy is GMO and saturated with petroleum-based chemicals.
Petroleum-based chemicals tend to accumulate in fatty tissues.
And because eggs have fat/oil, factory eggs are loaded with the nasty stuff.
Another problem factory-feed component is cottonseed.
Cotton is the most sprayed crop, those petroleum-based chemicals accumulate in the cottonseed oil.
Take a look at a can of smoked oysters... the label usually proudly announces cottonseed oil as an ingredient.
!!! After touching the can, worsh your hands !!!
Chickens need the exercise and mental stimulation of chasing insects and searching for sprouts.
That is found in pastured eggs.