Take a moment to search the net for “Salmonella Egg Blame” and you’ll see a list of prime targets.  Among them:  ‘battery cages,’ ‘factory farming,’ ‘Wright County Egg,’ ‘industrial food production,’ ‘Hillandale Farms,’ ‘Jack DeCoster,’ ‘tainted chicken feed,’ ‘USDA,’ ‘FDA,’ the ‘US Senate’ and even ‘Barack Obama.’  The real culprit, however, is the US consumer.

Every decade for the past 150 years, the percentage of our income that we spend for food has decreased.  We now spend less than 10% of our income feeding ourselves compared to over 15% thirty years ago and over 50% before 1900.  To put this in more concrete terms, in 1875 it took 1,700 hours of work to purchase the annual food supply for a family.  Today it takes about 260 hours of work.  Oh, and in 1875 we spent 1% of our annual income on health care.  Today, we spend over 16%.  Not surprisingly, health care costs have tracked the food cost trend, but in the opposite direction.

Rose Acre Farms in Iowa; HSUS investigation Feb-Mar 2010 (Humane Society of the US)

We live in a food democracy.  Each day we vote with our wallets at grocery stores and markets throughout the US.  Over 90% of the eggs purchased by the US consumer are factory farmed, caged, non-organic, non pasture raised, non free range eggs selling for less than ten cents per egg.

To produce such an egg, producers must keep the hens in abysmal industrial farming conditions which the European Union and voters in the State of California have deemed inhumane and have outlawed.  Economics dictate that these hens are fed the lowest quality ingredients available, including at times meat and bone meal from – you guessed it – other dead chickens.  The total cost of this feed cannot exceed about two cents per hen, per day.  That’s like feeding humans for less than $1 per day.

In May of this year four college interns, sponsored by Whole Planet Foundation, took up residence in Pena Blanca, Guatemala with a mandate of living on $1 per day each.  This is what the poorest of poor live on worldwide.  The college students’ goal was to see if they could do the same – and experience the consequences.  They succeeded.  When I met up with them last month in their tiny dirt floor hut (think large battery cage), they had lost nearly 15 lbs each and had contracted a host of parasites and diseases including e. Coli poisoning, but they had survived on $1 per day each.  They are currently producing a documentary on their travails and those of Guatemala’s poor (more at www.onedollaraday.weebly.com).  They are also finishing up a regimen of heavy antibiotics, anti-parasites and anti-amoebas.  Sure, we can survive on $1 per day just as a hen can survive on two cents.  But, what’s the real cost?

Vital Farm eggs sell for around $5-$7 per dozen in stores and farmer’s markets.   Why so much?  Because it costs more to produce high quality food.  Our girls live outdoors, on healthy green pastures during daylight hours.  They eat native grasses and an organic feed ration that I’ve eaten by the handful (don’t try this with the feed given to hens laying ten cent eggs).  They run around, get exercise, take dust baths and generally get to act as the birds they are.  Thus, they produce an egg that has only 179 mg of cholesterol (vs. 200-280 for other eggs) and even contains vitamin C!

Hens being hens at Vital Farms.

We as consumers have no problem spending $1-$2 at home for our main entre (or a can of soda).  Why then do we have a problem buying $7/dozen eggs that will cost about $1.25 for a two-egg omelet?  Why do we believe that that omelet should cost $0.20 instead?

Michael Pollan, author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” defends his purchase of $8/dozen eggs in a recent Wall Street Journal article by stating that we should all “Pay more, eat less.”  If we buy ten cent eggs, we are to blame for the conditions that produce tainted foods.

Not your typical neighborhood kitty...

One of the trade-offs we make when we raise poultry on pasture is that by virtue of the fact that the hens live outside and enjoy a more natural, healthy way of life, they are sometimes exposed to predators. Although few things are more infuriating than finding the remains of one of your birds strewn about the pen, it helps to remember that the predators are not malicious or evil; they have a job to do, and they are going to do it until we can figure out how to stop them. Despite the fact almost every critter from a skunk to a coyote enjoys a delicious chicken dinner, it is possible to protect your flocks from predators.  Electric fences, motion-activated lights, flashing predators-lights, and good, solid chicken trailers are all excellent passive counter-predator measures. But sometimes, a wily critter figures out all your tricks, and it is time to get active.

This winter, I started noticing little scatterings of feathers in various secluded spots around the farm near the pens. No other remains; no bones or blood or anything. Just feathers. The only animals around here that can eat a whole bird and leave nothing behind but feathers are the neighborhood dogs, or coyotes, and the electric fences usually do an excellent job of keeping those guys out. As I examined the signs and clues, I began to suspect another culprit.  These kills did not have the characteristic messiness of canine activity.  There was a precision and economy to this predation that led me to a depressing conclusion; that we were dealing with a Bobcat! An afternoon of snooping around finally yielded one large print  -  more round than a coyote or dog  print, and without the tell-tale toenail-marks. A great big Kitty track.

A truly beautiful animal.

My options were to try to sneak around in the woods at night, hoping to surprise and shoot an animal that was much better-equipped for sneaking around than I will ever be, or to try to live-trap it. I hate the idea of killing an animal that is just doing its job, trying to survive and perhaps feed its young.  There is no glory or fun in that for me.  After all, we put a delicious chicken-buffet right in this cat’s hunting-ground. It is our job to keep the hens safe, and to not lead the predators into temptation.

I bought a large live-trap, four feet long, three feet high, and two-and-a-half feet wide.  I set the trap in the woods near the spot where I had seen the print, covered it with a tarp and laid some old brush and branches up against the side. The next step was to slide the gate of the trap open, and tie it with wire  so that it would not close if an animal entered it.  A buddy of mine who had trapped bear in Alaska had told about this method, called “step-trapping”.  The idea is to get the animal accustomed to the trap by degrees over a period of time. Even the hungriest of hunters isn’t going to go head-first into a small enclosed space without a lot of investigation, no matter how delicious the bait might smell.

I bought one of those ten pound tubes of hamburger meat at the grocery store, and threw some on the ground around the trap and in front of the opening. Over the course of the next week I moved the bait a little closer to the opening of the trap. Each morning the bait was gone. On the fourth day I placed the bait just inside the doorway. The next morning it was gone. I placed the bait deeper in the trap. The next morning it was gone! I was still finding signs of predation, so it was very difficult to be patient and allow this process to work itself out. I finally tossed some bait deep into the trap, all the way to the back so that it rested on trigger mechanism.

The next day, not only was the bait gone, but there were feathers inside the trap. The Bobcat had grabbed a hen and taken it into the trap to eat it. I’d say it had gotten pretty comfortable with the trap, at this point. I tossed more hamburger meat into the trap, untied the gate, and set the trigger. The next morning, a big, fat male bobcat was glaring at me through the bars of the trap.

Our friend, on his way to a new home and hunting ground!

I must admit that I gloated for a little while, and I may have shaken my backside in the direction of the Bobcat and verbally taunted him, before we called animal rescue. I’m not proud of this behavior, but it felt good.

Austin Wildlife Rescue did a great job removing the trap from my truck, tucking it away in a quiet place for a while, and then transporting and releasing the big guy into an area where he can hunt safely and not be a nuisance to anyone but the poor critters he likes to eat.

So the hens are sleeping better at night, and so am I. And next time a large predator finds its way onto the farm, we will be more than ready for it!

Home to hens, not droids.

“Each pen consists of…a mobile chicken unit (MCU) that looks like a galvanized, very South Austin version of the Jawa Sandcrawler droid factory where Luke Skywalker purchased C-3PO and, reluctantly, R2-D2. The MCU is the coop where the hens nest.

“”The object is to allow the birds to live as natural an existence as possible,’ [Robert] Kraft continues. ‘There are downsides to that: they have to sleep outside in the cold, but it’s not anything they can’t adapt to. They sleep in big groups and their body heat keeps them warm. The electric fences keep ninety-five percent of the predators away.’”

Whole Foods recently sent a video team out to shoot the goings-on at our Austin farm.  You may know that we’re part of the Whole Foods Local Loan Program, that provides funding to local farmers to help them grow and get their products to market.  We really appreciate their work on the great little video they produced:

http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2010/03/vital-farms/

Girls On Film

Also – don’t miss our slightly more amateurish effort:  “Hens on Winter Pasture,” on YouTube.  Tell your friends!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6VXwKQZkA

This winter has been incredibly rainy and cold for this part of Texas. While this bodes well for the condition of the pasture in the coming spring, it can be a little trying when you work outdoors. You just come to accept being muddy, cold and wet all the time as a normal state of affairs, and console yourself with memories of the 107 degree temperatures of last summer’s drought.

Hens dressed for winter

A lot of people ask me if the cold weather is bad for the hens, since they live mostly outside. They actually do quite well in the cold, as long as they have a way to stay dry and sheltered. They are, after all, birds, and the forests and meadows all around the farm are full of thousands of birds who seem to survive each winter, even when temperatures dip into the teens, as they did last month. Birds are provided with excellent insulation in the form of feathers, which we actually use to make winter clothing and sleeping bags.

Each of our flocks has a mobile coop in which they spend their nights, and where they can shelter in inclement weather. These trailers provide the essential protection from precipitation and wind that they need to get through the winter.  On colder nights, they huddle together for warmth. When I make my rounds of the flocks at night, if I stand in the doorway of their trailer, I can feel the heat radiating from the sleeping hens.

Mobile chicken units give shelter and trap heat

Chickens get into trouble when they are exposed to a bad combination of elements, such as wind and cold, or cold and wet, or wind, cold and wet. In these conditions they are unable to retain their body heat, and can die from simple hypothermia. It is very important to make sure that the flocks have plenty of places to go to get out of the wind and rain. As with everything else in pasture-raising, if you give the birds the resources that they need, they will figure out how to use them.

Generally speaking if the temperatures do not dip into the twenties and teens regularly, and the winters aren’t too harsh where you are, you shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping your flocks on pasture in the colder months. As long as they are properly provided for, a cold, sunny day on pasture will always beat a warm day in a cage.

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