FAQs

Pasture-raised eggs are laid by hens that can spend their days outdoors roaming the pastures as they please. Our pasture-raised girls have access to a minimum of 108 square feet each, unlike cage-free birds that have far less freedom. On average, cage-free birds get a maximum of 1.2 square foot of space per bird and may rarely, if ever, see the sunlight. We make sure our girls have access to fresh air and sunshine year-round.   

In certain situations, when the health and safety of the girls are at risk, we may have to keep them temporarily indoors. We make these decisions based on state and local guidance as well as the guidance of our veterinary partners and Certified Humane®, who audits our pasture-raised animal welfare practices. These situations are only in the event of the threat of significant risk to the girls, such as a weather or health emergency.  

It’s like a four-leaf clover, but tastier! Double yolks usually come from young flocks that are just beginning to lay. Until the hens get the timing just right and learn how to lay, two eggs may merge together in the hen’s oviduct, meaning she’ll lay one large egg with two yolks hidden inside. Don’t be surprised if you see multiple eggs with double yolks in a single carton – they all came from the same young flock.

A hen’s age is the main factor that determines egg size. Young hens that are just beginning to lay tend to produce smaller eggs, and, ironically, a few jumbos as well. To keep your cartons consistent, we do our best to grade out the eggs so you only get eggs of a certain size. Because our eggs are natural and not from a factory farm, you may see some variation in egg size.

 We believe our eggs taste so good because our pasture-raised hens live happy, healthy lives! Our girls’ fresh-air lifestyle is full of foraging and feasting on natural goodness, which shines through in every egg. If you’ve never cracked open a pasture-raised egg, your culinary life is about to change.

While it’s true that a hen’s ear-lobe color will tell you what color their eggs will be, that’s not the reason behind the color. An egg’s color is determined by the breed. Most of our hens are Hy-line Browns – and it’s in their genetics to lay brown eggs.

All of our family-owned farms are in the pasture belt, which is the U.S. region, including Arkansas and portions of Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, where pasture-raised eggs can be produced year-round. Learn more about the Pasture Belt here.

You can find our eggs in grocery stores nationwide – both natural and mainstream. Use our store locator to find a grocer near you that carries our pasture-raised goodness.

Currently, we’re not able to deliver directly to your doorstep. However, if you use a grocery delivery app, you may be able to have our eggs delivered right to you! Check out our store locator to see which nearby stores carry our products.

 The type of supplemental feed our girls receive is what differentiates our three egg types from one another. All our girls forage for their own food in the outdoors, but they also receive supplemental feed to help round out their diets. The girls who lay our USDA Certified Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs receive a supplemental feed that’s USDA Certified Organic and are raised on farms that are also Organic-certified. The hens that lay our Original Pasture-Raised Eggs are fed a supplemental feed that’s carefully formulated to keep them happy and healthy. Regardless of the type of egg, our farmers refrain from using pesticides or herbicides on their pastures, and all of our eggs are Certified Humane and hormone-free.

Yes. USDA regulations require that we wash our eggs before we pack them. Washing does remove the eggs’ natural protective layer (called the ‘cuticle’ or ‘bloom’), which is why they must be refrigerated.

Sorry for the confusion around this. Some states require different verbiage, which means we need to print both “Sell By” and “Use By” dates on the package. The date for “Sell By” and “Use By” should be the same and should serve as a general frame of reference for when you should consume your eggs. Given that the quality of our eggs will be best before that date, our recommendation and the safest route is to always consume your eggs prior to the listed date to ensure you are getting the freshest eggs. 

If you choose to keep your eggs past the “Sell By” date, please see the USDA’s suggestion for the safe consumption of eggs. The USDA states that you can consume eggs for up to 3–5 weeks after bringing them home if stored properly. See more here. But remember, first and foremost, always trust your senses.

Our hens spend their days foraging in the pastures, seeking out native and seasonal grasses like clover, rye, and wild onion. They don’t stop with plants, though! You’ll often catch our girls munching on a grasshopper or snacking on a worm. Alongside the food they forage, our girls receive supplemental feed. The supplemental feed consists primarily of corn and soybean meal, which the hens need for protein, as well as additional natural ingredients, including paprika and marigold, which, along with their outdoor snacks, help the hens produce eggs with deep orange yolks that our consumers prefer. Our supplemental feed is developed by an animal nutritionist, ensuring the girls receive all the nutrients they need to support their health, active lifestyles, and overall well-being.

Everything a hen eats, including pasture grazing and supplemental feed, impacts yolk color. Because the girls are pasture-raised, it’s natural for yolk color to vary. This variation is affected by how often hens eat and what they eat. In the summer, the girls tend to eat less due to the warmer temperatures. In the winter, they tend to eat more to stay warm. The girls eat a variety of seasonal and localized vegetation and critters as they are roaming through the pasture, as well as supplemental feed. The supplemental feed consists primarily of corn and unprocessed soybean meal, which the hens need for protein, as well as additional natural ingredients, including paprika and marigold, which, along with their outdoor snacks, provide nutrients and help the hens produce eggs with deep orange yolks that our consumers prefer. Our supplemental feed is developed by an animal nutritionist, ensuring the girls receive all the nutrients they need to support their health, active lifestyles, and overall well-being.

Yes, our feed does contain unprocessed soymeal, which we’ve found to be the best source of the essential proteins and amino acids our girls need to lay.

Certified Humane® is a third-party animal welfare organization that certifies our pasture-raised egg practices. Certified Humane® standards are set by a committee of renowned animal scientists, veterinarians, and researchers. Each of our farms undergoes an extensive application, inspection, and verification process each year to ensure that we meet or exceed all of the Certified Humane® standards for pasture-raised laying hens. We’re proud to carry the Certified Humane® seal on all of our pasture-raised cartons. Read more about Certified Humane® standards for hens and other animals on their website.  

Most of our girls are Hy-line Browns.

They go outside! Our girls live in warmer-weather states (an area we like to call the Pasture Belt) where the winters are mild. Day in and day out, our girls freely forage for fresh grasses, seeds and protein-packed critters.

We take many steps to ensure the health and safety of the girls. In fact, we have an entire team dedicated to supporting our farmers through weekly phone calls, monthly in-person visits, quarterly meetings, a seasonal newsletter, and a bi-annual survey. We provide guidance on care for the girls in all of these touchpoints.  

On all farms, we take measures to proactively prevent predators and pecking.  

Because the risk of predation is highest at night, our girls are taught from a young age to come indoors before sunset. We also regularly patrol our farms and use harmless countermeasures (like dummy owls!) to keep aerial predators at bay. 

To protect the girls from pecking each other, we follow an industry-standard practice of dulling the tips of their beaks. We follow this process to reduce the beak’s sharpness, so hens don’t hurt themselves. See more information on beak trimming from Certified Humane, one of our auditors, here.  

Finally, we work with an external veterinary partner who visits farms regularly with our farm support crew and is also available on an on-call basis. The services help educate our crew and quickly aid farmers in need.  

We believe in improving the lives of people, animals, and the planet through food. For animals, this means we work with over 375 family farmers to give laying hens a meaningfully better life than the confinement they would face in the industrialized food system. Each hen raised in our network of family farms enjoys access to at least 108 square feet of open pasture, fresh green grass, and the freedom to come and go from comfortable barns during the day as they please.

To answer what happens to male chicks, we want to provide some background on how and when laying hens make their way to our family farm partners.

Hens start out at a hatchery, a place where chicks are hatched for the purpose of laying eggs. Because only female hens can lay eggs, chicks are sorted by gender once they are hatched. Female chicks, also known as pullets, are then transported at one day old to a pullet house for 17 weeks. A pullet house is a specialized farm that raises the girls from day-old chicks until they are about 17 weeks of age, when our family farm partners are ready to receive them. The girls spend the next several weeks inside the barn nest training where they are kept warm, can play, and spend time learning how to lay eggs.

Because male chicks will not grow to become egg-laying hens, it is the industry norm for hatcheries to cull them shortly after they hatch through means deemed acceptable by the American Veterinary Medical Association. And while we do not own or operate a hatchery of our own or control the means of culling that the hatcheries use, we recognize and take seriously our role in advocating for a more ethical food system, which includes doing what we can to identify alternatives to male chick culling.

We were previously involved in exploring alternatives to culling through a company called Ovabrite, which tried to develop methods to accurately predetermine the sex of a chick before it hatches. We are also encouraged that researchers in Europe have successfully launched beta technology that can predetermine sex before a chick is hatched. Our team is actively staying educated on new developments and initiating conversations with key stakeholders as we hope progress can be made on this industry practice in the United States soon.

The practice of male chick culling is a reality of today’s food system that has been difficult to solve. We’re actively following the latest developments that could reduce, or even eliminate this practice, and we’re exploring solutions that can work at our scale and in a model that’s sustainable for all of our stakeholders. 

We are committed to ethical food production and continuously raising the standards for ourselves and the food system. We believe we’ve made significant progress in fulfilling our mission to bring ethical food to the table—whether it’s providing meaningful economic opportunities for family farmers, giving laying hens a quality life on pasture when they are with our family farmers, or supporting the communities around us.

Vital Farms began with one small family farm and a mission to bring ethically produced food to the table. Over the years, we believe we’ve played an important role in improving the lives of people, animals, and the planet by prioritizing our stakeholders—farmers and suppliers, crewmembers, communities and the environment, customers and consumers, and stockholders—and treating them as partners.

We partner with over 375 small family farmers who share our passion for animal welfare and sustainable farming practices. Starting when the girls arrive at one of these farms at about 17 weeks of age, we think they live just about the best life possible for a laying hen—they enjoy acres of open pasture, fresh green grass, and the freedom to come and go from comfortable barns as they please.

But farming is not always as straightforward as the picture postcard of hens roaming in fields of flowers. While we’ve prided ourselves in never taking the easy way out and in doing what we can to change our small corner of the farming world whenever we see the opportunity, there are biological and economic realities, and, at times, the two collide.

As the amount and quality of eggs our hens lay naturally decline with age, there comes a point when the hens can no longer produce eggs in an economically viable way for our small family farm partners. In our early days, when we had just a couple of farm partners located near urban areas, we would place an advertisement on Craig’s List and find homes for our retiring ladies with backyard farmers.  Today, for several reasons including current FDA restrictions, that method no longer makes sense. So, when retirement time comes for these laying hens, our small family farmer partners have little choice but to ‘retire’ their flock en masse either through an acceptable method of euthanasia or by selling them to pet food companies, which we believe helps make use of this precious resource.

We consider the end of our hens lives as sacred as the rest of their time with us and will advocate for any viable alternatives to a hens’ post-laying life that are sustainable for our farm partners, the hens, and communities at large.

As you would expect from our family farmers, they frequently and thoughtfully monitor the health of their hens. There are two primary reasons our farmers bring their hens inside full time. The first is that we bring the girls inside to keep them safe from extreme weather. The second reason is to protect them from seasonal health issues, such as avian influenza. These decisions are often mandated or recommended by individual states, and implementation varies across our farms, depending on location. In either case, the girls go back outside as soon as it’s safe to do so. 

We’ve been actively defending ourselves in this case since it was filed in 2021 because we stand by our commitment to ethical food and believe in our animal welfare practices – including our pasture raised standard, our Bullsh*t Free marketing and the importance of our hens and cows having outdoor access year-round. The PETA Foundation, which helped file the case, actually dropped out of the case last year (May 2023), and the court dismissed the class action claims last month (September 2024). For anyone who wants to see the actual court filing from the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, it’s publicly available and you can find it here.

Avian influenza occurs when migratory waterfowl pass over farm areas and leave droppings containing the virus. “Bird flu” does not normally infect humans, but it is a serious issue for chickens and typically spikes in the spring and fall.  

Ready to join our flock? Click here to learn more about becoming a Vital Farmer.

Thanks for asking! Vital Farms Butter starts with cows who are pasture-raised on family farms during the warm months (that’s an average of 200 days a year!). Those four-legged ladies supply a rich cream to churn into something special. With 85% butterfat in our Unsalted Butter and 83% in our Salted Butter, we believe our rich and creamy butter can’t be beat. 

The dairy cows that produce milk for Vital Farms butter eat a 90% grass diet. To ensure a well-rounded diet, farmers work with nutritionists for the remaining 10% to supply feed consisting of grain, vitamins and minerals to ensure a healthy and balanced blend of nutrients for the girls. We believe that a balanced diet for a dairy cow leads to premium high-butterfat milk and a healthy, happy cow!  

All of the family farms in our supply network provide outdoor pasture access to their girls during the warmer months, an average of 200 days a year. During the colder months, the cows spend their days in a warm, comfortable barn with plenty of room to express their natural behaviors and socialize with their herd. During all four seasons, the girls have plenty of room in the barns to eat, drink, and lie down in a clean, dry space.   

The farmers who produce our butter share our passion for animal welfare. Those farmers’ cows spend their time grazing fresh pastures during the warm months, totalling to an average of 200 days a year. They’re able to express their natural behaviors, socialize with their herd, and have plenty of room to eat, drink, and lie down in a clean, dry space whenever they desire. They have plenty of water and food, which consists of 90% grass and 10% nutritionally balanced feed to promote good health and well-being. Finally, they are never given any growth hormones.  

Dairy cows are normally milked twice a day (they can get uncomfortable otherwise). All of the farms that produce our butter use modern milking equipment and our dairy farmers use best practices and the highest standards to make milking time-efficient, enjoyable for the cows, and extremely clean to keep the cows healthy.  

Holsteins and Jerseys are the most common. These gorgeous girls transform grass, feed, and water into high-quality, high-butterfat milk, which we convert into cream that in turn, makes our high-quality butter. 

Our butter is not third-party certified by The Non-GMO Project. We rely on the farmers, most of whom are multi-generational dairy farmers, to know what is best for their land and herds.

Though our general rule of thumb is six months in the fridge (a little longer if salted), our recommendation is to always enjoy our butter by the expiration date on the package and store it in the refrigerator. Check your butter packaging for an official date.  

Our butter cartons are recyclable. The wrappers are not compostable due to their wax coating. We’re exploring alternatives to ensure our packaging is as recyclable or compostable as possible.   

Yes! Family farms are an essential part of our mission to bring ethically produced food to the table. The family farmers who produce our butter are located in the island of Ireland. Many of them have been multi-generational farms for decades. These family farmers share our passion for animal welfare, sustainable farming practices and are committed to continuous improvement.     

Vital Farms’ Restorative Eggs are our first certified regenerative eggs that are produced using a core set of regenerative tenets that promote rich, nutrient-dense soil. We call these eggs “Restorative” because these principles aim to create a harmonious ecosystem between land and animals that’s good for our girls and leaves the land better than we found it.

Regenerative farming practices focus on restoring soil health to grow stronger, healthier land through planting cover crops like ryegrass, minimizing soil disturbance and rotating hens on pasture. We believe we should be restoring instead of depleting the earth through the practices we use to grow food. Thank you for joining us in doing our part to try to help restore the health of the earth on which we all depend. Learn more at vitalfarms.com/restorative.

We collaborated with regenerative agriculture experts at UnderstandingAG  to define what regenerative farming means to Vital Farms and thoughtfully develop our core tenets of regenerative farming.  Read more about our 5 core tenets here . In partnership with them, we have transitioned our four regenerative farms to adopting these regenerative farming tenets since early 2021.

We are always working to improve and scale our farming practices. Each of our family farms already avoid herbicides and pesticides, as well as practice pasture rotation to fortify the health of the land. Our Restorative farms are going a step further by implementing regenerative principles to foster balanced environments between pastures and animals, increasing the land’s resiliency, and improving the health of waterways. We also conduct annual soil sampling on our Restorative farms to verify soil health improvement year-over-year.

Just like our other hybrid egg cartons, the Restorative carton is made of 100% recycled paper and pulp, and is fully compostable & recyclable!

Our Restorative Eggs are certified by Regenified™, a third party regenerative verification standard. Our certification recognizes the incredible regenerative practices across our Restorative farms that build soil health and increase land resiliency, and we’re proud to be the first national egg brand to achieve this recognition! Read more about our Regenified certification here.

The Azur hens who lay our True Blues consistently lay more medium-sized eggs than large. Like most things in nature, variation is part of the magic! We do our best to embrace and celebrate these nuances of nature, and part of that means selling the eggs that the hens decide to lay!

We do our best to respect the variation that stems from our system of pasture-raised family farming. If you notice unique sizes or (blue) hues coming from our Azur hens… that’s how Mother Nature intended it, and we see no reason to interfere! While the eggs in a single carton should be close in size, there can be some variance. As a result, our True Blues cartons may contain some larger eggs alongside the medium eggs.