Pastured Eggs

choi

Stephanie Strom, Putting the Chicken before the Egg; A rising demand for eggs from Birds not just uncaged but out and about. New York Times, Nov 23, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/2 ... ey-are-hatched.html

Quote:

In Alexandre Family EcoDairy Farms, "chickens foraging in the fields outnumber the cows 10 to 1 — and the roughly five million eggs they will produce this year command prices that make organic milk look cheap.

The farm "produces pastured eggs, which on their farm means that the hens live in housing that allows them to spend much of the day in open pasture. While still a minuscule portion of the roughly 75 billion eggs produced in the United States each year, pastured eggs like theirs are one of the fastest-growing category of eggs in America today.

"Not all eggs labeled 'pastured' are the same — there are no federal regulations governing use of the terms 'pastured,' 'free range' or 'cage-free' on egg cartons.

Again the Alexandre farm at Crescent City: “The mild climate — the temperature fluctuates by only 11 degrees throughout the year — is ideal for outdoor hens, and rotating chickens and cows in pastures has a number of benefits for livestock and soil. Chickens, which are natural foragers, peck at cow patties [ie, dung] to extract fly larvae and in the process help distribute manure around a field (as well as keep the fly population to a minimum). That helps fertilize grass for the family’s 3,500 dairy cows

My comment:
(a) Crescent City, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_City,_California
(b) battery cage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_cage
(sharing common divider walls, as in the cells of a battery)

(c) "Eggs labeled 'cage-free' typically means the hens that laid them were free to move about inside a barn kitted out with an aviary system of roosts, nests and feeding stations — but with no outdoor access at all. * * * cage-free environments, which are a step beyond the colony cages that are the minimum needed to meet the California regulations."
(i) kit (vt; First Known Use 1919): "chiefly British : EQUIP, OUTFIT —often used with up or out"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kit
(ii) Compared with battery cage, an “enriched colony cage” has a bigger cage and twice the space per bird.

(d) "The [hen] barns are split in the middle and separated, to give the birds ample room to walk in and out."

That is, a barn opens into two halves, and checks may enter either.
(e) I bring article to your attention, not necessarily I approve them. For the life of me, I can not fathom myself eating organic food, which is not only expensive but has essentially the same ingredients as ordinary one. Moreover, raising fowls in enclosed environment protects farm animals from influenza virus introduced by migrating wild birds.