Pastured…Cage-Free…Organic…Certified Humane?!

Free-roaming refers to the fact that our hens are not in cages within the chicken house. Our hens are free to roam around inside the chicken house and produce what is called a cage-free egg. Our home farm even has screened-in “balconies” for the chickens to go outside and get some fresh air when the weather is nice. Some of our farms also have the opportunity to allow the chickens to roam around in an organically managed pasture.

Pastured, then, refers to the fact that our hens have the opportunity to roam around outside in the grass. When you see organic pastured eggs, that means the field and also any supplemental feed given to the chickens are free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMOs. We also have gmo-free and soy-free pastured eggs, which are not certified organic but do not have any soy or GMOs within the supplemental feed or the grass where the chickens roam.

Certified Humane is another term you will see on several of our eggs cartons. While we strive to ensure humane treatment of our hens at all of our family farms, some of them have taken on the additional process and costs of obtaining the Certified Humane certification. Eggs from these farms carry the Certified Humane label on the carton. This essentially means that our chickens are handled in a way that promotes their health and happiness by providing constant access to fresh water, gentle handling, freedom to roam and roost, etc. Read more about this on our Alderfer Eggs website! The information in this post was taken from our website there, so feel free to check it out for even more information on the many different varieties of eggs we carry here at the Old Dutch Cupboard!

Let’s break down the essentials:

Cage-Free/Free-Roaming = big houses, access to fresh air, but no cages or access to grass

Pastured = access to grassy fields and supplemented with feed, sheltered in houses during nighttime/bad weather

Organic = grass and/or feed is free from pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMOs

Certified Humane = an extra certification acknowledging the humane way in which the chickens are raised