| Eggs & Poultry | Cost | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Merri Bee Organic Eggs | From $6.50 to $10.50Priced by weight
($12 a kg) |
Yes |
What’s the difference between free range and organic eggs?
Merri Bee Organic’s hen’s natural free range diet is supplemented with purchased certified organic or biodynamic grain, plus our own kale, silverbeet, purslane, termites and sometimes milk from the house cow . Our hens are excellent rotary hoes, shredding kikuyu in the search for protein. They are paper shredders as well and recycle all our waste paper and cardboard into soil. We raise our day old chicks using clucky hens or heat from a compost heap, and they are free ranging from about a week old. Chooks and ducks are great pest control in our orchards .
We let chooks into our vege gardens with the aid of a “chicken tractor” (we have various designs but my favorite is the bamboo domes) where they deal with populations of insects. (Permaculture principal : turn problems into solutions) So slaters and slugs are turned into beautiful eggs and we don’t need to use cheap genetically engineered soy bean as a protein source for our hens. Most egg, meat and dairy animal feed contains dangerous pesticides and GMOs, eg: Roundup Ready TM canola meal, the residue left after oil extraction. “Free Range” eggs can also contain persistent pesticide residue if the fowls range on contaminated ground. Only Organic Standards legally define free range , insist on land tested clean and prohibit GMOs .
Eggs from our pastured chooks contain high levels of conjugated linoleic acid and omega 3 oils which may make your child smarter and may help prevent cancer. It is important to cut vege oils from your life as they are very high on Omega 6, and the balance of Omega 3 and 6 is thrown way off, causing inflammation. The solvents they use to extract oils are toxic. Never fry in oils, use lard and tallow ( contact us for organic animal fats). Even healthful olive oil is dangerous if heated, so only use it in salad dressing. Learn more about fats here.
An industrial egg is a fossil fuel egg. We have planted many edible seeded wattles , tagasaste and coprosma trees to reduce our need for purchased organic grain only because it needs fossil fuel to grow and transport it to us.
Caged and free range eggs are often cheap but buying them is cruel, and possibly dangerous. “After an outbreak of salmonella in lead to a recall of 380 million eggs, [all from the same company]. Brands recalled included “Hillandale”, “Sunnyvale” and “Sunnymeadow” [all of which have nice imagery of grass and chooks on the cartons . Customers may not suspect their eggs come from a dark shed where chooks sit in cages 3 stories high and never feel a ray of sun, or see a blade of grass, let alone a sunny meadow.]
Merri Bee Organic Eggs….. Something to Crow About!
