Posted on 04/30/2015 11:46:17 AM PDT by C19fan
Many of the largest U.S. sellers of organic eggs boast that their hens are vegetarian, and for an increasingly food-curious public, this may be great advertising.
A carton of Eggland’s Best advertises that the company uses “vegetarian fed hens.” Horizon promises that their eggs “come from hens that are fed a 100% organic, vegetarian diet.” Land O Lakes hens have a diet with no animal fat or by-products.
Yet for the chickens, who are natural omnivores that readily devour bugs and small animals when they’re available, the forced vegetarianism can be a disaster.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
evil PP chickens!
:p
“chickens are predators”
*chill down spine*
US chickens are heavily armed.
I guess they have no clue where the term “hen pecked” comes from. They will eat anything including each other if they have to.
As a city girl who’d love to live in the country, I so love coming on posts like this and finding out all about chickens and livestock, etc. It makes FR so informative and entertaining.
“It gets worse. There are now people demanding eggs from chickens fed only grass”
Colorado chickens. Horrible to eat, but fun to watch.
The food fed to fatten up cows can be quite creative. Besides the base food of a grain slurry, typically of corn and corn byproducts (husks, cobs), there may be soy and soy hulls, spent brewery grain, spent distiller’s grain, and other cereals. CAFO nutritionists can get pretty creative, though, sometimes including cotton byproducts, old candy (including wrappers), beet and citrus pulp, and peanut shells in their cows’ diet. These creative feeds might bring a greater nutritional value than just corn feeding.
A grass fed cow will eat anything: graminoids (hundreds of different species of sedges), shrubs, clovers, and random leaves if they can get to them. Basically, they’ll eat what ever is in reach, green, and leafy. Because of this, grass fed beef is more nutritional if the cows have access to good stuff to eat.
If grass fed cows do not have good food at their feet, they will be stringy, tough, and unpalatable. To make up for that, it is not too hard to finish with a fattening up process that makes them good and tasty with the product of both worlds. I like the distiller’s spent grain method because it makes use of a distillery by-product. Maybe the cows get a little zing on their last days on earth.
LOL! GMO chickens strike back!
Where did those infected cows who gave mad cow disease to the next cows, get MC in the first place?
Vegetables are what food eats.
I've heard of "A Chicken in Every Pot", but "Pot in Every Chicken"?
When you are trying to purchase something that isn’t available,
the phrase you’re looking for is
“business opportunity”.
One food show had the host visiting a cheese farm in France. The “best” cheeses were made from Summer milk, when the cows were grass and wild flower fed, versus Winter milk when the cows were fed hay.
There are actually farms in Maryland producing them... I just don’t have time to drive there as well during the week. I have ordered them via the internet... as interest in pastured animals increases, I’m sure stores will begin stocking them.
BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopy) is believed to have started when cattle feed included rendered sheep that had been put down because they had a rare but well-known disease called “Scrapie”.
That’s what I have heard, anyway.
I read an article that cattle acclimated to an Alpine climate have much higher levels of CLA... due to the grass they eat. I also don’t have a problem with cattle that are 10% or less finished with grain products. I think Kerry gold butter is 90% grass fed.
I read an article that cattle acclimated to an Alpine climate have much higher levels of CLA... due to the grass they eat. I also don’t have a problem with cattle that are 10% or less finished with grain products. I think Kerry gold butter is 90% grass fed.
They need bugs—lots of bugs.
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