Vegan Fed, Cage Free Chickens

[Ben]

Holy moly. The phrase in the subject line came up in an opinion piece on vegetarianism in the commie pinko local rag from where I used to live, that I read once in a while just for the blood pressure boost.

Vegan fed, cage free chicken is apparently a thing. I suppose sold the the same people who will move to Zuckerville and Gatesville and who have never lived outside of the city bubble. The chickens here get let out of the coop every afternoon until sundown. The first thing they all do is run like madmen to the lawn and the trees, where they start eating bugs, worms, and whatever other non-vegetarian thing they can find. The only way to have a "vegan fed" chicken is to keep it locked up in a little cage all its life and force feed it the vegan diet.

[Jamisjockey]

Holy moly. The phrase in the subject line came up in an opinion piece on vegetarianism in the commie pinko local rag from where I used to live, that I read once in a while just for the blood pressure boost.

Vegan fed, cage free chicken is apparently a thing. I suppose sold the the same people who will move to Zuckerville and Gatesville and who have never lived outside of the city bubble. The chickens here get let out of the coop every afternoon until sundown. The first thing they all do is run like madmen to the lawn and the trees, where they start eating bugs, worms, and whatever other non-vegetarian thing they can find. The only way to have a "vegan fed" chicken is to keep it locked up in a little cage all its life and force feed it the vegan diet.

I've heard one of the advantages to true free range chickens is that they eat all the bugs and have the best eggs because of it.

[French G.]

Yes, chickens are not vegans. They are leftover little angry dinosaurs. If you are vegan and pass out near them from lack of nourishment they will eat you. And cage free is a stupid feels marketing term that tells us nothing about their living conditions. I would want to hear square foot per bird if any metric.

Mine delight in eating hot dogs. I cook excess eggs with rice and feed them back to them, vegetable scraps, old cheese sticks, etc. Thus far the most comical was marshmallows, once they figured out what they were you would see one bird with a marshmallow running flat out from three other birds that wanted it. I can't imagine how unhappy they would be if I made them vegans.

[Ben]

I've heard one of the advantages to true free range chickens is that they eat all the bugs and have the best eggs because of it.

Yup. The yolks in the eggs here are practically orange. For about a week twice a year, they're kept in the coop while the land is getting plowed, planted, etc., just so they don't get run over by a disc (because they'll run out into the field to look for all the stuff that gets turned up by the tractor) and you can already see a paler yolk just from that week on feed only.

[Perd Hapley]

[K Frame]

That vegan diet had better damned well be GMO free!

[230RN]

Mine were locked in their cruel henhouse overnight.  Not to keep them in, but to keep fox and other sharp-toothed critters out.

Otherwise, they roamed the yard and pastures eating bugs and stuff.  Had one zoom by me, angels 5 feet, and snatch a flying grasshopper right out of the air.

Startled the hell out of me, then I was amazed at that kind of precision flying.

Downside was we lost about 13 birds to some kind of predator when we went off on a day trip somewhere.  Must have been a loose dog, because they weren't carried off to be eaten.  They were just killed and left there.

Terry