When you are the most expensive egg on the shelf, your product needs to be amazing. The yolks should be a deep gold (which means the hens are eating plenty of grass), the whites should be thick and fluffy (meaning the eggs are really fresh), your egg shells should be strong (meaning the birds get enough calcium in their diets) and your carton label should be easy to understand, authentic and unique. And maybe most importantly, the eggs must taste delicious!

All of the elements combined take A LOT of work to get right. We are very happy to welcome Jackie Sleeper, our new Director of Quality, to the Vital Farms team. As we bring on new pastured farmers and work with new stores, we want to make absolutely sure you are getting the best egg out there, in every way.

Jackie’s experience with ethical poultry production began early; she grew up raising chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys on the rolling green hills of her parents’ small Oregon farm. She attended Oregon State University and earned her Honors B.S. in Animal Science, with a focus on Animal Behavior and Bioethics. As a passionate advocate for farm animal welfare, she spent four years with Humane Farm Animal Care as Director of Certification for the Certified Humane® program. Jackie is excited to bring her expertise in animal welfare and quality systems to Vital Farms, and to support production of the best-tasting, most ethical eggs and chicken anywhere! In her down time, she can be found gardening, hiking, biking and generally enjoying the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

With Ag-Gag Bills on ballots all over the country and massive factory farms doing everything they can to NOT show you their “farms”, Vital Farms believes in transparency in everything we do. We host large quarterly farm tours for our customers and allow them to photograph and take video on any of our farms. We answer every customer question via phone call and email personally, and we are extremely open in the documentation of our farm practices. As we expand and begin working with more small family farmers, we stay in constant contact and visit with those farmers very regularly, to ensure they maintain the highest standards of animal welfare in the country.

Thank you for believing in us, and for supporting the ladies in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

- The Vital Farms Crew

Photos from our Spring Farm Tour in Austin, TX Saturday May 4

All photos by Haley Price

Thanks to some much needed rain and cooler temperatures, our pastures are looking greener than ever. This means the ladies get to eat tons of fresh native grasses, flowers and bugs foraged in their fields and pastures. We provide 108 square feet of fresh green pasture per bird, year round. Here are a few photos taken last week at our Austin, TX Onion Creek farm; THIS is what pasture-raised farming looks like

Photos by Haley Price and Eric Gonzales

(Post and art by Haley Price)

Hi Vital Farms Fans-

We’ve had an ongoing technical problem that has affected our receipt of your questions submitted via our online contact form. (See below). If you’ve submitted a question via this form between the very end of November and last week, and have not received an answer, please let us know, re-ask your question, and we will be happy to answer. We are so very sorry to have kept you waiting! Answering your questions in a timely manner is very important to us and the issue has been remedied.

Our apologies,

The Vital Farms Crew