We sell eggs… when we can. We have 21 laying hens in the East Flock (Barred Rocks and Black Stars) who give us nearly 2 dozen eggs a day in the summer, and far fewer as they molt and the daylight hours diminish. There are 30-some younger hens in the West Flock. As I write this, we’re only getting a handful of eggs each day, and sometimes fewer than that. So we’re not selling many eggs right now (November 2009) :-( We’re looking forward for the days to start getting longer again.
We get all colors now!
So… Dragonwood is no giant in the egg retailing world. But they are such wonderful eggs! For starters, the hens are loved, they are our working pets, and everyone knows that eggs from happy chickens taste better. :-) But beyond that, these are pastured, free-ranging chickens. They have lots of room inside their coops to move around (even flap around) and lots of outside ranging room every day. The East Flock has 3500 square feet of fenced pasture to root around in, and the West Flock has our entire yard and adjoining woods to peck through (only The Garden is completely off limits).
What’s this mean for you? If you haven’t had them, true free-range eggs from chickens that roam around eating grass and crickets and worms and seeds are remarkable. For one thing, they have deep orange yolks, much more colorful than the pale yellow things you get in eggs you buy at the grocery store. They’re so colorful because this varied diet gives them lots and lots of beta carotene, giving free range eggs much more beta carotene that regular USDA factory-farm eggs give you.
Granted, we haven’t yet had nutritional tests run on Dragonwood eggs… we’d like to, but our sales volume doesn’t really support that kind of marketing research yet. The next best thing is the extensive study of free-range eggs from 14 different farms conducted by Mother Earth News in 2007. In short, they found that the free-range eggs (compared with USDA standards for factory-farm eggs) show:
Some with spots and some with dots.
• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene
Those are incredible differences in nutritional levels! And it gets better… Vitamin D is very hard to find in foods, and egg yolks are one important source. The USDA says standard eggs provide about 24 IU per large egg… way more than most foods. But the latest Mother Earth News research in 2009 showed a range of 3-6 times MORE Vitamin D in free-range eggs! So let’s add a new line of bold text:
• 3-6 times more vitamin D in free-range eggs!
Of course, we’re talking REAL free-range chickens here. Don’t necessarily believe you’re getting REAL free-range eggs if you buy them at the grocery store and Free-Range is printed on the carton. All the phrase “Free-Range” means in marketing-new-speak is that the chickens at that facility have daily access to the outdoors. I’m paraphrasing, but this can mean that so-called Free-Range eggs might range freely for a few hours on a bare dirt surface or concrete pad. If you want real eggs from free-ranging, free-foraging fowl, you need to know your sources. Dragonwood chickens are such thorough free-range feeders that by August it was almost impossible to find a cricket jumping through the grass within 100 feet of the West Flock coop!
Dragonwood eggs range in size from medium to extra-large, and range in color from dark reddish chocolatey-brown (from the Welsummers) to a light pinkish tan and even to pastel greens and blues from the Aracaunas that have just started laying. Every dozen eggs comes in a variety of sizes and shades, but mostly we keep the smallest ones for ourselves and package up the biggest ones for you. So if you aren’t on our list for delivery, get in touch with Paul (email paul at bitfool dot com) and we’ll see about getting you a taste of Dragonwood.
