How Natural is Natural?

This is Penny. Penny is one of our first chickens. We got her back in 2015. I can tell you in detail what she looked like as a baby, I can describe her personality perfectly, I know what she eats every day, and I can tell you what time I locked her up safely tonight. She is an ALL NATURAL chicken.

Natural can be a fancy word that's thrown around in commercial farming that does not offer any proof. Even if a farmer provides a chicken with a natural food source, as consumers you must ask are they providing natural conditions and treatments?

When I say Penny is all natural, I mean it. On top of her natural beauty, Penny has supported our lifestyle for the past two years. She has provided us eggs almost daily, well except for in the winter of course.

Farmers have a choice to make when raising chickens through the winter. They can choose to put artificial light on chickens (to give them the 14 hours of light they need to produce eggs on a regular basis) or they can choose to not put artificial light on their chickens.

Here's why we choose to give our chickens a paid vacation. Putting artificial light on chickens can decrease their life expectancy. Chickens are more prone to get ovarian cancer from being forced to lay all year round with artificial light. The new research recently has shown that forcing hens to lay using artificial light can also cause other reproductive issues including lash eggs. We are firm in our promise to provide the BEST, natural eggs. Not to mention, I need a break in the winter months. Naturally we are more sedentary in the winter months and we believe our chickens deserve a break too.

The past two winters, we had less chickens but enough eggs to support our personal egg needs. This year, we expanded the farm, bred more chickens, and had so many eggs we took on some amazing customers. We thought with more chickens we would have enough eggs in the winter to support our customers egg needs. Unfortunately, we are not getting enough eggs to support our own egg needs this winter. Are we going to put a light on our chickens so we can continue our egg selling business throughout the winter? No. Why would we force our birds to change their natural seasonal laying cycle for our own benefit? We are staying true to the way Nature Intended Things to Be.

It's very hard for us to tell customers that we do not have enough eggs to sell them. Our customers have become addicted to our eggs. Store bought eggs do not compare to natural, farm fresh eggs. We feel terrible that we got customers addicted and now do not have enough eggs to provide eggs all year round.

We are taking the time to write this post to let you know that our chickens are in fact on vacation, the NATURAL vacation they deserve. Our honey and egg sales will remain seasonal. We apologize for thinking we would have enough eggs over winter to continue selling to our dedicated customers. I hope this blog post has helped you see that our ethics do not bend when it comes to protecting our girls. We sincerely apologize and hope that you understand.

We will continue to expand our farm. In fact, in the Spring we will be breeding more chickens. Maybe one winter we will have so many chickens that we will be able to provide eggs year round, but for now it will be seasonal.