Let's Visit Our Country Hens

                      We would love to welcome every fan of The Country Hen to our farm. Unfortunately, that is not possible, but we still want to open our virtual doors to you. Welcome to a series of posts with videos that will take you through our special farm – from specially formulated feed to sunlit barns to the processing that prepares our organic omega eggs for your table. For our previous posts in this series, see our tour of the processing plant.

          Let’s visit our girls! First stop is biosecurity at the shower house and a fresh clean bio-secure coverall uniform, ball cap or head cover, clean rubber boots and a sanitizing footbath. We do not want to carry any potential hazards into the barns with us. Now that we are dressed appropriately let’s go inside to say hello. In our barns, you’ll see lovely ladies all enjoying each other’s company and all the “creature comforts” of their sunlit barns and porches. We love to pamper our girls and watch them enjoy their lives in our care. Whether indoors during the frigid winter months or outdoors on the specially designed porches during warmer weather, the girls have plenty of space to engage in all their natural behaviors. Thick litter fills the scratch areas where the ladies can dust-bathe, sunbathe, scratch and peck to their heart’s content. We even provide them with some simple toys to keep them active and happy. Some of the girls enjoy mobile-like shiny objects suspended from above or lengths of hemp rope naile, others love to kick and peck at brightly colored balls and empty water bottles with a few pebbles contained inside so they rattle when the hens play “football” with them. On a raised level beside the scratch area, you will find the “food court” where our feed is available from sunup to sundown for any and all to enjoy at their leisure. A very innovative track shuttles feed along from the silo down the length of the barn in a little trough that has square dish-like links forming a chain. Everyone can have as much as they can eat whenever they like!

                I love the chirring sound of happy hens and you can hear the girls chattering in chorus even before you step inside.  Our barn workers (a.k.a. chicken tenders) come to bond with their flocks so well that they can tell from the sounds the hens make whether everything is as it should be or if there might be something wrong. The hens are gentle creatures but they are also very skittish and so we must walk slowly so as not to startle them when we visit with them. Some of our workers keep music playing for the hens while walking the floors and along the benches looking for floor eggs, equipment failure and perhaps any of our feathered friends that may be feeling under the weather.

                We care for a few different breeds of hen here at our farm. The breeds are chosen based on how well they are suited to the climate here in Massachusetts. Perhaps you will recall an old advertising slogan “brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh”. Brown eggs come from brown hens and brown hens have proven to be better suited to the kinds of winters we get in New England. Believe me, winters here are not a peaceful and serene as you might imagine when looking at a Norman Rockwell painting or listening to carols about a White Christmas. We heat our henhouses to keep the hens warm and cozy even through our girls are better suited to this cold climate than their white-egg-laying cousins living in the southern states. The color of the egg does not have any bearing on nutritional quality. A brown egg has exactly the same nutritional value as a white egg as long as the hens that are producing them are eating the same manner of diet. The nutrients the hens eat become concentrated in the eggs those hens produce. Better nutrition going in means better nutrition coming out!

Our Eggs Take a Wild Ride

      

           We would love to welcome every fan of The Country Hen to our farm. Unfortunately, that is not possible, but we still want to open our virtual doors to you. Welcome to a series of posts with videos that will take you through our special farm – from specially formulated feed to sunlit barns to the processing that prepares our organic omega eggs for your table. For our previous posts in this series, see our tour of our feed mill.

       The eggs move from the loading conveyor into the Diamond 8200 Egg Grader we affectionately nicknamed “Bertha” That nickname might be better suited to an incubator room at a hatchery though, but someone tagged the machine with this name and it just stuck. Soft cushioned suction gently lifts our exceptional eggs to begin their journey through a gentle rinse, wash, sanitizing process that resembles a miniature automatic carwash of sorts. The eggs travel along on rollers that turn and continually spin each egg so the entire surface of the egg gets clean as they proceed through this hulking piece of equipment.  The eggs pass through a spray rinse followed by a gentle scrubbing wash with rolling brushes and then on through yet another sanitizing rinse before moving on to the candling booth. Watching the eggs being lifted this way reminds me of some of those wild rides they have at amusement parks you see advertised. Lucky for us eggs don’t need a ticket to have fun on this little water-park ride.

                Here is an interesting bit of trivia for you; hens deposit a natural “bloom” membrane coating called a cuticle on the outside of every egg that provides a barrier to prevent bacteria from getting inside the eggs. In some European countries it is illegal to remove this bloom from eggs that will be sold in retail markets and these places do not require refrigeration of their eggs as a result. Folks from these countries find it strange that we keep our eggs in the refrigerator. I find it strange that they keep their eggs at room temperature, on their countertops. The FDA enacted The Final Egg Safety Rule here in the USA to prevent outbreaks of Salmonella and since that  time, all eggs that are sold in retail stores here in the USA must be “bloom” free, sanitized, and then they must remain refrigerated at less than 45 degrees Fahrenheit to prohibit the growth of bacteria. Once the outside of the shells are scrubbed and sanitized they move on to their big chance at stardom at the “bright lights on Broadway” of our Candling Booth where our experienced Candlers inspect them for imperfections inside the shell.

Meticulous Milling Makes Mealtime Magic

      We would love to welcome every fan of The Country Hen to our farm. Unfortunately, that is not possible, but we still want to open our virtual doors to you. Welcome to a series of posts with videos that will take you through our special farm – from specially formulated feed to sunlit barns to the processing that prepares our organic omega eggs for your table.

      The first stop on our virtual tour of The Country hen is our mill where the real magic happens. We make our own proprietary blend of feed using certified organic ingredients we source as locally as possible from organic farmers we know and trust. Our proprietary formulas of feed, developed by the founder of our FARMily, George Bass with the help of a whole team of scientists, veterinarians, and specialists in human and hen nutrition. This feed is directly responsible for the superior levels of all three varieties of Omega 3 PUFAs, Lutein and Zeaxanthin, Vitamin D, and 13 essential nutrients contained in our delectable eggs. The old adage “you are what you eat” fits pretty nicely with the egg production process as the quality of the eggs our hens produce is the result of the quality of feed our hens are eating.

      Our meticulous Mill Manager, Brian, never wonders what our hens are eating, where the feed might have come from, or how fresh the feed might be. Brian just happens to be a graduate of Harvard University and so I do affectionately introduce him to folks as our “Resident Professor of Feedology.” This is not an actual title but the nickname suits him just the same. I have never met an actual professor of anything who is willing to climb up to the tippity top of an enormous silo during a blizzard to check on the ingredients the way Brian does. Brian and Miguel work together to make the very best feed for our feathered friends. These great people know precisely when a feed ingredient was harvested and even from which plot in the field the item came from!

      Brian and Miguel inspect every ingredient upon delivery and test it for moisture content and quality before accepting or rejecting the item. The ingredients are stored in silos that send ingredients through an intricate network of auger tubes into this mill to be blended together to become our fresh and flavorful feed. Brian is so confident in the quality that he actually samples the ingredients himself. I could not resist the opportunity to try some myself after I watched him do this. It tastes very much like the grainy popcorn crumbs you find in the bottom of the popcorn container in my opinion but overall, not bad! Do you know any other farmers daring enough to eat the same food they give to their animals?

      After the feed is made, it is transported through yet another network of tubes to smaller silos that fill the feed truck. These silos are set up on a steel structure high enough to allow the feed truck to pull in underneath and then gravity drops the feed into the truck. Brian and Miguel deliver the fresh feed to the henhouses and replenish the silos at each barn location.