Do you buy eggs?

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Burning Petard
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Do you buy eggs?

Post by Burning Petard »

Me, not so much. I boil some to put in salads. Always put some in my meatloaf. Rarely makesome concoction that calls for eggs. My daughter has been complaining about the price going up. I found out the bird flu is a bigger problem in the egg industry that it is in the poultry meat industry. This round of bird flu is mostly spread by wild birds. Hard to isolate the egg layers the way it is done for the meat producers.

So I paid attention the last time I was in the grocery store and bought a 1.5 doz package of extra large. It was even 'branded' with a brand nameI recognized from tv commercials. Me, I have always treated fresh eggs as a pure commodity. A grade A large was the same as any other similar grade and size of egg. I even believe the brown or white shell is of no significance as to the way the egg tastes or cooks.

This time I looked carefully. First surprise: Grade A large and Grade A extra large were priced the same. Everything was grade A. I remember my parents explaining this stuff to me and it was not uncommon to see grade B and Grade AA . And size then was small, medium, large, X-large and Jumbo
My mother explained that baking recipes rarely said so, but the eggs called for were medium or large. Real small eggs or the very big ones might throw off the ratio of other ingredients. Very little of that in the egg display I was looking at.. No jumbo or small no grade B or AA.

But the carton was foam, not paper pulp and had all kinds of wonderful marketing/sales stuff printed all over it that made this eggs something very special--always look for this brand. Among other things, these eggs came from chickens that ONLY ATE VEGETARIAN FEED ! Have we come to such a state of industrial farming that the general public does not know that chickens naturally eat bugs and worms found in the dirt they are scratching in?

Does the descriptor of a few lines of hand writing about which I could have said "Looks like a bunch of hen scratching" no longer have any communicative utility? Seems to me to be just one more sign post I have lived too long.

snailgate

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Chickens are omnivores so feeding them a strict vegetarian feed as some producers do will invariably result in sick chickens and less optimally nutritious eggs. However the market demands this because vegetarians don’t want to eat eggs from healthy chickens who consumed a feed containing animal byproducts as non vegetarian feeds do. I guess they would rather that the chickens who made their eggs be in some cases driven to cannibalism by the protein deficiency often suffered by chickens forced into vegetarianism.

Most commercial chickens live their entire lives in barns, never seeing natural light or the sky, never breathing fresh air. Those who are ‘free range,’ meaning they are loose in a massive barn with thousands of other chickens and barely room to scratch, nevermind to run around - will certainly come in contact with the occasional bug to supplement the diet but not in anything like the quantity pasture raised chickens consume. Pasture raised chickens will also eat mice, voles, baby snakes, etc. - chickens by nature are omnivores AND hunters.

If you’re fond of eggs and can spare a couple of dollars more per dozen, nothing beats small farm raised chicken eggs. The flavor is amazing, and they can live unrefrigerated on your counter for days by virtue of the natural preservative on the shells as laid by a healthy chicken. You never have to worry about dropping a cold egg into a hot pan because you forgot to take them out of the fridge ahead of time.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Sue U
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by Sue U »

Of course, the truth is that chickens are omnivores and will consume anything and everything whether animal, vegetable or mineral. But some chicken feeds do contain some pretty gross stuff that wouldn't be in the chicken diet "in the wild" -- if there even were such a thing as wild chickens -- like "animal byproducts," fish meal, offal, ground feathers, etc. An all-vegetarian diet probably isn't great for chickens either, since "naturally" their main source of protein would be insects and grubs, if left to feed themselves. We give our chickens all the non-meat kitchen scraps that in our pre-chicken days would have gone to the compost pile -- which includes their own eggshells as a source of calcium. I only buy eggs in the dead of winter when our hens are not laying, but I do notice the prices in the grocery store and they have been astronomical this year due to the culling necessitated by avian flu. A year or so ago I routinely saw eggs at 79 cents a dozen. Lately they've been around $3, and twice that for the fancy brands.
GAH!

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Sue U
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by Sue U »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2022 3:29 pm
Pasture raised chickens will also eat mice, voles, baby snakes, etc. - chickens by nature are omnivores AND hunters.
While I have heard that, I have never seen our chickens come up with a rodent or snake (and we have plenty of mice, voles, garter snakes, etc.). But to be fair to the chickens, the feral cat I contracted with for pest control isn't doing a great job of catching them either.
GAH!

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Maybe your chickens are ethical vegetarians? Insects don’t actually count as animals, even though they are a great source of protein.

To clarify I recognize that non vegetarian chicken feed contains some less than ideal protein sources, but they are the same ones included in many commercial pet foods that many vegetarians surely feed to their pets, so I just get hung up on the idea of withholding a reasonably healthy balanced diet to animals who already live a fairly miserable life to serve us. It’s actually hens made for the roasting pan or soup pot who get to scrabble in the dirt in a small space packed like sardines - the hens who lay eggs are almost always confined to battery cages their entire lives and the space they have to live in is smaller than an 8x11 sheet of writing paper. Think about that when cracking those eggs into the pan.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Long Run
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by Long Run »

SG deserves an ovation for raising this important topic.

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Gob
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by Gob »

Lady down the road keeps chickens, 125p for half a dozen eggs. I eat them regularly.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Gob wrote:
Sat Dec 24, 2022 9:52 am
... 125p for half a dozen eggs.
How much is that in real money?   :lol:
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-"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

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Gob
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Re: Do you buy eggs?

Post by Gob »

£1.25
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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