Hens Do More Than Lay Eggs

There's no end to how beneficial it is to farm with pasture-raised laying hens.

What They Do For the Land

Our hard-working hens are part of our team enhancing the soil without chemicals:

• Hens devour weeds and even prune the water suckers around the base of our nut trees. That saves us from using herbicides and having to go through with loppers.
• They control pests, like invasive insects and crop-eating slugs. That helps protect our other food without pesticides.
• Their fertilizer feeds beneficial bugs who pull it into the soil, and the microbiome digests it to make nutrients accessible to the orchard roots and cover crops.
• They peck, scratch, and root around, aerating the soil.

We rope off a section of the orchard and pull their coop to rotate their foraging grounds. It ensures "the ladies" (as they're called by our farm manager) can peck it clean before we move them into a fresh area. Otherwise, they'll only choose their favourite snacks and ignore the other plants and bugs we need them to eat.

What They Do For You

After all this help, they give us eggs packed with vitamins and minerals from their happy, natural lifestyle:

• A diverse and natural diet translates directly into more vitamins and nutrients in the eggs themselves. That means enhanced nutrition for you.
• Hens are getting vitamin D from the sun (layer and free run chickens can only get what's added to their feed). That translates to better vitamin content in the eggs and efficient calcium absorption they need for firm eggshells.
• Movement and exercise leads to robust and healthy birds. There's peace of mind in knowing the hens are living in tune with their natural instincts.
  

Pasture-raised eggs are an affordable source of lean and healthy protein, whether you're feeding growing children or trying to build muscle at the gym. 

What They Do For Our Team

The hens encapsulate the philosophy, "The grass is always greener on the other side." As such they keep us fit and teach us patience and persistence. Because pastured hens are sturdier and stronger than indoor chickens, they can launch themselves high in the air and flutter down over the fence. We're swift to catch them and try to innovate new ideas to keep them in their lane.