Real Eggs, Wild Eggs

Most of you know that grocery store eggs are lacking in so much, and yes, I'll even add in the organic AND cage free eggs if they're coming from the grocery store. While we were living in our camper and traveling around the country we sometimes had limited choices for food - including our beloved, precious eggs.

Eggs found in the barn

Organic means that the hens were fed a diet of organic feed. That's it. They can still be packed into the chicken batteries that we've all seen photos of (if you haven't, Google chicken factories for the images). Cage free means only that all those hens are not put in those batteries, but in HUGE!!! covered buildings that will hold 100,000 plus hens and then can choose to jump up and lay their eggs in a "nest" but it's not what you're thinking, when you and I think of the meaning of cage free. Watery whites and flat, or simply easily broken yolks were standard fare way too much of the time from those eggs. Yuk.

I've often wondered what wild bird's eggs look like. What their white would be and what kind of color the yolks would be. Today, I had the opportunity to see first hand.

Going out to feed, I found a freshly laid set of 14 quail size eggs in the mornings hay. Momma would not be coming back and I had to feed. I scooped up the eggs with my seemingly once in a lifetime opportunity to truly see the inside of a wild bird's eggs. While it shouldn't have surprised me, they looked like miniature versions of our own pastured hen's eggs. Thick, firm whites and gorgeous, golden yolks that stand up nice and firm. WOW! While we do feed the hens commercially prepared feed, they also get to eat the grass in their enclosure. They get to scratch for bugs and peck at the natural minerals found in the ground. They are also doing their part to give back ... as they poop, they are fertilizing the ground that they will someday again feed on, only next time, it will be even better.

If you haven't yet found someone close by to you with a pastured flock or even a backyard flock, start one of your own. They are not hard, you don't need many and who knows, you may end up with a healthier backyard and a little income to boot!