What is pastured food?
The most nutritious food out there is meat and eggs that come from animals that forage and graze mostly on pasture/grass, enjoy plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and have available all the clean water they desire. All animals were created to thrive on this kind of environment. Due to natural foraging and grazing, pastured food products have been proven to have higher nutritional value, and exceptional flavor compared to “top quality” meats and eggs in your local supermarket.
How does the nutrition compare with other “high quality”, “free range” foods?
The list below is the nutritional run-down found in the eggs of pasture raised hens. These results came from comparing the eggs of 14 pastured flocks with USDA conventional eggs. You can read more about this comparison test and see the actual egg chart in this article on the internet. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Relish/Pastured-Eggs-Vitamin-D-Content.aspx
Pastured Egg Nutritional Information 
• 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
Along with more nutritious eggs, comes the nutritional benefits of the meat in animals raised on pasture. Compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, chicken, bison, lamb and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA. To read more on what CLA is and the importance of adding quality CLA to your diet, click on this link to read the complete article. http://www.eatwild.com/cla.html You may also want to go to http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm and read more on the nutritional value of pastured meats. To sum things up, Drury Lane Farm has personally found that the nutritional value of meats, eggs, and dairy products from pastured animals are the best for your health. We found when compared to commercial dairy and chicken facilities, pastured products offer you more “good” fats, and fewer “bad” fats. They are richer in antioxidants, and they do not contain traces of added hormones, antibiotics or any other drugs which have been linked to serious health issues including many types of cancer.
What exactly is “free-range/cage free” chicken?
Well….it depends on who you ask; the government (USDA), or us, your local farmers that raise pastured products. When the conventional egg and poultry industry stamp their products with “free range” or “cage free”, that means that the chickens are “allowed access to the outside” even if this means just leaving small doors open in a huge chicken house, just in case the chickens want too go outside. Even if the chickens choose NOT to go outside, it still is considered “free range”. Most chickens are quite satisfied just sitting by the feeders, lazily getting quick, easy access to their feed. However, if they do venture outside, they can be on bare dirt or even concrete. It doesn’t matter to the USDA. I encourage you to read the whole story in this article in the next link.
What is GMO(Genetically Modified Organisms) food?
At Drury Lane Farm, we strongly believe in using NON-GMO feed with all our animals because what we feed our animals will eventually find it’s way into our own bodies. It has been proven that foods with genetically modified ingredients in them, or animals that were fed GMO feed, are now affecting our human bodies in horrible ways. Cancer, infertility, and more have been linked back to genetically modified foods that we have been eating. What is worse is that our FDA does not require a label stating that GMO ingredients were used. I have listed below some websites that you can check out and discover exactly what we have discovered… GMO ingredients in our food supply are deadly and dangerous and should be avoided!
http://www.relfe.com/GMOs.html
There are many more websites about GMO foods out there that you can search. We feel that all of us need to get our heads out of the sand and take a stand against harmful ingredients in our food. These GMO ingredients are killings us but we can make a choice and support our local farmers who are trying to grow our food by all natural and safe means. Drury Lane Farm supports our local farmers and we ask all our friends to do the same.
You get what you pay for.
We are sure you have noticed that pastured meat and eggs are a little more expensive than the store bought, “healthy” eggs and meat at your supermarket. There are many reasons for this, one being the high production costs for the pastured meat farmer verses the conventional farmer. For the conventional farmer, the production costs are low due to the fact that they stuff tens of thousands of birds in each building.
One person can pull a switch and the automatic feeders and waterers do the rest. Once a day that same person walks through the building collecting the dead birds and throwing them into a big dumpster. These conventional broilers are so crowded, that they have to walk on top of each other, sometimes over dead carcasses, just to get to their feed and water. In this feed there are large quantities of antibiotics that are given to keep disease at a minimum. As a matter of fact, these birds need the antibiotics because their cramped, dirty living area, feeds the E. Coli bacteria found in 99% of these chicken’s carcasses. This is the chicken that you eat when you go out to your local restaurants and all fast food chains. It makes you think twice about those chicken nuggets.
Our broilers live in floor-less shelters that are moved to fresh pasture EVERYDAY. These shelters provide protection from predators while still allowing them to forage for fresh, green plants and high, protein bugs. Our supplemental feed is non-GMO. This foraging, along with humane processing practices , provides us with delicious and nutritious meat and eggs. However, to produce this healthy broiler, we have to spend most of each day taking care of our birds. We move the broilers each morning to new pasture and hand feed and water each “broiler buggy”.
Our broilers are checked on 3 – 4 times each day depending on how the outside temperatures and their waterers get scrubbed and cleaned at least once a day. Dead chickens do happen, but we dispose of our birds in a sanitary, humane way. However, when the birds are taken care of properly, and given a fresh, clean home to live in, with lots of sunshine, the death rate is very low. All of this special attention and care we give our broilers, in turn, gives us the most pure, healthy, delicious meat that we can enjoy. You can tell the healthiness of the broiler by its broth that is produces when cooked. Here is an example of two chickens, one is a free-range chicken bought at a farm that raises their own chickens and the other is our Drury Lane Farm chicken. Look at the broth… theirs (right) is cloudy and ours (left) is pure, clear, and golden. Which one do you want to eat?
Look what happens when you shine a light through the jars of broth:
Just like the conventional broiler farmers, the commercial egg layers use methods of “storing” their laying hens so that the production cost stays low. In a commercial layer house, the hens are stuffed in small cages which are stacked on top of each other from floor to ceiling. The hens live in these cages day after day until their laying days are over. If you walk into one of these commercial houses, you would notice the dark lighting and the strong smell of ammonia that is coming from the large piles of chicken dung that are 
growing with each day’s fresh poop. The hens are pale and most of their feather have fallen out or are being plucked out be other hens due to the cramped living quarters. They have water piped to each cage which the hens access through one water nipple per cage. If any of the hens manage to escape, you can find most of them roosting on the large piles of dung under the crates. When the hens lay their eggs, the eggs drop into a trough and roll down to a conveyor belt which takes them to a large brush that scrubs them clean. These eggs are passed through many different stages of machines before they are boxed up and shipped to a supermarket for you to buy and take home. For further photos, check out this link.
Our Heritage breed layers happily reside in what the boys call “The Coop DeVille”. They scratch and forage on fresh pasture everyday and can access as much fresh water and sunshine as they desire. Our hens diets are supplemented with our non-GMO feed. We purchase the hens when they are newly hatched, and carefully raise them in our brooder house until they are big enough to go outside safely. When they are of good size, we place them in ”The Coop DeVille”, where they will start laying at around 16 weeks of age. The boys will then start collecting eggs twice a day. When the eggs are collected, they are
brought into our home kitchen and carefully examined for cracks. If the eggs are dirty, we lightly wash off the dirt using our own hands or a soft scrubbing pad. However, most of our eggs do not need cleaning due to the fact that the laying environment is kept clean with fresh straw. Plus, the hens have plenty of roosting space in the Coop DeVille so that the need to roost in the nesting boxes does not exist. Everyday, from the time they are babies, until they grow too old to produce quality eggs, our layers are fed, watered, checked on throughout the day, and constantly monitored for protection. Because of this special care and healthy, pastured, living environment, our eggs show an obvious difference to store bought eggs. The yolks are darker in color, the whites are firm and plump, and the flavor is outstanding! Below, you can see the two with our egg being the one on the left. Note the firmer whites and the rich, dark color of the yolk versus the runny whites and pale, shallow yoke of the store-bought egg.
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