Saturday, June 9, 2012

The Truth About Hormone-free Chicken and Eggs!


Don't be fooled by chicken products that say they are hormone free.  It is a misnomer, like saying that candy is fat free to lure you into thinking that their products are in some way superior to other chicken products.  The fact is, that no hormones are used on chickens or egg laying hens.  There simply is no need. 

Commercial chickens have been engineered to grow extremely quickly to an unnatural size and weight.  So that they may be ready at 35 days to be slaughtered for meat, while they are biologically speaking still chicks.  In fact at that age, chickens still chirp like chicks instead of kluk like hens and roosters do.

If these chickens would be allowed to grow beyond their slaughtering age into maturity, they would  grow to a point incapable of supporting their own weight.  Waddling around and laying around in exhaustion, and quickly succumb to disease.  These chickens were not designed to live instead they were designed to die. 

Commercial chickens have had their survival genes bred out of them.  Broiler chickens, which are the chickens designed for meat, no longer know how to reproduce.  Most of the hens no longer know how to lay eggs.  And if by some reason they do lay eggs they do so indiscriminately without knowing what they are for.  Gone are the days for this hen to know how to sit on them and hatch chicks.  The broiler roosters have lost their ability to mount the hens.  They are completely useless to use as a procreating rooster.  The only thing these chickens know how to do is eat and get fat, and they do that really well.


Commercial laying hens, used for egg production on the other hand are designed to do just that.  Lay eggs, over and over again.  At least 2 eggs a day with the right commercially enhanced feed.  These hens have hardly any body mass, since they are designed to use all their food calories in egg production.  If you were to slaughter one of these hens for meat you would be severely disappointed.  These hens are mainly just bones and ligaments, with hardly any meat.  Completely useless for consumption.  Not even for soup. They only thing they could be used for is dog food, once they have outlived their usefulness, along with all the male chicks that are systematically eliminated once hatched.

There is no commercial chicken farmer that hatches his own eggs to grow his chickens, it just isn't done.  All chicks are bought, raised and then slaughtered and sold.  This is how the industry works.  And one thing about these chickens is that they have extremely delicate immune systems.  They are very suceptible to disease.  There is a parasitic infection called coccidiosis which affects all commercial chickens, and anticoccidiosis medications are a standard addition to all chicken feed, especially for young chicks.  Also, bacterial and viral diseases are commonplace.  So all chicks are vaccinated and receive prophylactic antibiotics.  It would be practically impossible to raise chickens or even laying hens without them. Especially since commercial chicken production involves intensive densely populated chicken systems.  At such density, any slight sign of disease would quickly reach the whole chicken population and destroy it.


 The only chicken nowadays that actually do know how to sit on their eggs are criollo chickens, in other words backyard chickens of mixed origins, ornamental hens and fighting hens and roosters. These chickens are also naturally resistant to diseases especially coccidiosis, but difficult to find nowadays.  Most small farmers do not want to sell them if they have them.  In organic agriculture criollo chickens are the best way to go, although may not be profitable.

 Next time you reach for a chicken product, you can tell that eggs are not from commercial chickens when you see a wide variety of size shape and colour in the eggs. Egg yolk colour is not a reliable guide to tell if eggs are organic or naturally raised, since egg yolk colour enhancers are systematically included in commercial hen feed as well as commercial hen vitamin preparations.  Organic eggs generally have firmer rounder egg yolks and more viscous egg whites. And if you are concerned about genetically modified food or GMO's, know this that ALL commercial animal feed contains imported genetically modified corn and soy.  Financially it is the only thing that makes sense to commercial feed producers.

And if you buy meat, generally criollo chickens are leaner, thinner and leggier. In organic chicken production chickens need to be at least 80 days old, so the meat is slightly tougher than that of conventionally produced commercial chicken, but much more flavorful.

So next time you reach for a box of chicken eggs or a package of chicken breast that say without hormones, know that you are being fooled.  Hormones are generally reserved for large animals like cattle and pigs, where buying expensive muscle enhanced breeds may not be economically feasible.  But in chicken production it would just be an enhanced cost and with the relatively small profits per chicken would just not make sense, nor would it be necessary.  What you should really worry about is all the other stuff they feed them, that they are not telling you about.

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