Anyone here raise chickens in the EU?

(Bean) #1

Weird question, I know. I was able to eat eggs last summer in central Europe. Came home and could only eat from one farmer’s market vendor, but not others. No grocery store eggs of any kind worked.

This week, I was (so far) successfully able to add yolks from Costco organic eggs.

So now I wonder what hens eat in Europe. I also wonder if breakfast eggs are cooked in plant oils there generally?

I did some cooking classes in France 15 years ago, but not breakfast. That was generally yogurt, ham, and coffee.

#2

Hens eat the same stuff everywhere, they either eat their actual diet, which is mostly insects, or they eat grain / soy based feed. Which one they eat has a big effect on the eggs, the nutrition of them, and even very visible to the eye as well.

Light yellow yolks is typically a sign of them eating crap, while a hen that’s actually eating its true diet will have a dark yellow / orange yolk.

If you’re having issues when you eat eggs, pay attention to those things, many people even that do testing could be given the wrong answer based on what they’re being tested against. Happens all the time with dairy and people thinking they have a problem with Whey or Casein, when in reality it’s the diet and/or breed of cow that’s getting them, especially with A1 vs A2 casein.

(Bean) #3

I guess I should say- I’ve raised chickens. My question is what is the composition of commercial layer feed in the EU? Does it usually have soy, flax, wheat (middlings?), and/or corn?

I know some organic pellets in the US don’t have all of those. I’m wondering if there is something stands out. The ones I can eat are pastured, but not all “pastured” eggs work.

(Bob M) #4

I think the answer to this will be tough. You’d have to look at where you were in Europe, then do research on what they use to feed their chickens. And your particular eggs might not have come from there.

Even in the US, there are so many feeds available.

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/catalog/poultry-feed

Many of these have corn and soy, even the “organic” one I looked at. I only looked at 3, but they all had corn and soy.

#5

The question isn’t weird at all, tons of people keep chickens in the EU, maybe I would do so if my property wouldn’t be a tiny fruit garden on a slope (and there are lots of foxes too). I barely could find a tiny level place and I put my little veggie patch there.

I don’t know what exactly the commercial and other feed is (I buy my eggs from a lady who keeps hens and rabbits), a very good home-raised chicken gets everything, insects, lots of greens and of course, grains, that’s the base. Hens are very much omnivores.

If you eat anything here in Hungary and it’s not some special place, you get sunflower oil. Or maybe rapeseed oil if it’s more industrial, I mean, I can’t buy it in a supermarket, just sunflower oil. I ate a tonne of it in my first decades, this is and especially was THE cooking oil, period. We have other kinds and of course, people use lard too but that was one thing where people successfully got converted (sadly). So my money is on the sunflower oil if you eat anything fried here. IDK about other countries.

(Bean) #6

I knew it was kind of long shot- I wonder if chickens in Hungary have sunflower meal in part of their feed? Hmmm. Lots of sunflower fields in that region. I should reintro sunflower at some point. I don’t recall any specific trouble with sunflower seed butter.

(Bean) #7

Yep- that’s why I asked here. I know what my chickens ate in the US, so I thought I’d see if anyone happened to be by their local Polish feed store so I could compare, lol.

(Joey) #8

Am a bit curious … Can you elaborate on what you mean by “could only eat…” and “no grocery store eggs of any kind worked”?

Is it that you find their taste to be disagreeable? … and/or do you have digestive issues after eating them?

(Bean) #9

Good question. They give me hives / itchy skin and seem amp up my other allergies. ETA- I did not test positive to eggs when I did IgE testing and finding a way to add them back would make carnivore much easier, even if it’s just yolks.

(icky) #10

Is it not an option to just buy your eggs there?

I am in central Europe and yeah, I do have chickens. I can look up the contents of the feed I buy for them.

I wonder whether the difference might be free-range vs battery/ industrially raised chickens?

We have a lot of free-range chicken eggs in our supermarkets here because people care about that.

I grew up with chickens in our backyard and eating their eggs - or eating the chickens - is like 1000 x differnt to eating industrially raised chickens or eggs. There’s NO comparison.

For example, with industrial chickens, the bones are in awful condition… They’re soft and you can break them… With a free-range chicken that’s running around outside all day, using its muscles, hunting worms and bugs and eating grass getting fresh air and sunshine and happy in a social/ natural situation… The bones are incredibly strong… Zero chance of being able to break it… They’re like made of steel…

Anyway… I’ll go and look for the feed contents I give my chickens, but I doubt it’s because of those, really…

(icky) #11

I put it in Google Translate and this is what it says:
(Interesting… I’ve never looked at the contents of the chicken feed so closely before!)

Contents

16.00% crude protein, 3.60% crude fat, 4.00% crude fiber, 12.20% crude ash, 3.60% calcium, 0.45% phosphorus, 0.14% sodium, 0.75% lysine, 0.34% methionine
energy: 10.6 MJ ME/kg

Ingredients

Wheat, maize, soybean meal (made from genetically modified soybeans),
calcium carbonate, wheat gluten feed, rapeseed meal,
sunflower meal, vegetable fatty acid (rapeseed, palm).
Fatty acids (rapeseed, palm, sunflower, coconut),
vegetable fat (palm), monocalcium phosphate,
sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate

Additives per kg

Nutritional additives:
10,000 I.U. vitamin A (3a672a), 3,000 I.U. vitamin
D3 (3a671), 20 mg vitamin E (3a700), 50 mg iron
as iron(II) sulphate monohydrate (3b103), 6 mg
copper as copper(II) sulphate pentahydrate (3b405), 40
mg zinc as zinc sulphate, monohydrate (3b605), 40 mg
Manganese as manganese(II) sulphate, monohydrate (3b503),
1.3 mg iodine as calcium iodate, anhydrous (3b202),
0.20 mg selenium as sodium selenite (3b801)
Zootechnical additives:
700 FYT 6-phytase EC 3.1.3.26 (4a18),
152 U endo-1,3(4)-ß-glucanase EC 3.2.1.6 (4a15),
1,220 U endo-1,4-ß-xylanase EC 3.2.1.8 (4a15)
Technological additives:
Formic acid (1k236), lactic acid (E270), 22.6 mg
Butylhydroxytoluene (BHT) (E321), 74 mg sepiolite
(E562)
Sensory additives:
5 mg lutein-rich extract (2a161),
6 mg canthaxanthin (2a161g)

(Bean) #12

Thank you!! This is very helpful.

Of course no comparison with pasture raised, but even pastured hens usually get some feed.

(Bean) #13

She only has a small flock, so I can only get eggs once or twice a month during the summer. ETA- even other “home raised” eggs sometimes give me trouble, which is why I zeroed in on it maybe having mash/ pellets as a factor.

(icky) #14

Maybe ask her what brand of feed she uses and work out what the ingredients are in that?

(Joey) #15

Woa - that’s pretty miserable. And also kind of fascinating, that your body can detect (and react so strongly) to different feed sources ingested by the egg-layers - where one presents no issues and the other prompts an allergic reaction.

I wonder if you also experience allergic reactions directly from those categories of poultry feed producing your egg reactions (e.g., soy, wheat, corn?).

(icky) #16

Could it be the different types of chicken breed, maybe, in terms of allergens?

Industrial farms will chooose from a tiny amount of “industrially optimised” breeds.

Whereas people who have small flocks at home free-ranging will often choose different, older, more robust breeds…

(Bean) #17

The chicken feed is still a working theory- it’s still possible it’s something like what commercial producers in the US use to wash the eggs and somehow organic eggs use something different. Or breeds like Sugar-addict suggests. I really don’t know. It is kind of interesting, really.

ETA- and yes, I react to most of the ingredients of most chicken foods on some level, but not necessarily an IgE reaction- I’m celiac for wheat/gluten. Corn and flax make me itch. I’m just not sure how much of what the hen eats is conveyed to the egg. Our last chickens were massacred by raccoons and winter here is hard on chickens, but I might be tempted to try having birds again if I can pin down what my trigger is.

(Bob M) #18

A lot of polyunsaturated fat in there.

#19

People mostly care about price here I think… Okay, not everyone, obviously. We have different codes for egg, 3 but I only saw 2 this far. 3 is normal cage, 2 is… I can’t translate it but it has nothing with free-range, we have no code for that at all. I try to buy eggs from houses but of course, they can go from totally horrible to “wow, I almost wanna be a chicken here”. I can figure out where it is on the spectrum if I personally get the eggs from someone so that helps.
But I always could avoid getting eggs from supermarkets as many people keep chickens. Now I buy the better (code 2) supermarket eggs in need sometimes as it got way cheaper (while the egg lady wanted to raise the already high price - the war doubled the price or something and it never went back - but we told her we stop buying them then. they are often smallish too so we pay more money for less eggs - but I still prefer her eggs :slight_smile: not like I notice taste differences, I only feel certain supermarket eggs worse. With the better code, of course, I NEVER buy code 3 eggs, I rather go without eggs and I am an egg maniac but I have standards.)

Too bad I can’t keep my own chickens but I get very fine eggs without the problems. I can’t eat tasty chickens though as that is VERY expensive, I get the already luxury level cheapest ruminant meat for less and that is better and satiates me. Normal supermarket chicken is cheap and tasteless, almost like the eggs (those aren’t completely tasteless but not good). But I prefer red meat anyway.

I don’t think I can break industrial chicken legs here but it’s not like I have tried… One of our cats can break it with her teeth and eat it though (she often disappears for weeks and comes home very hungry sometimes so she is the one who occasionally tries to do it in the first place). It’s not exactly soft for sure. Maybe different feed or who knows, I don’t have any illusion about their life conditions, surely they aren’t kept fine and healthy…

We have this in summer with the egg lady too. But we get much more in the other seasons (winter is no different)… The hens here lay less in summer as it’s too hot for them or something. I saw that many times and heard about all the girls in the choir who kept hens.

And I can 't resist to show a pic from the camera I am watching sometimes… :slight_smile: There are 2 capable dogs, very much needed but even so, some casualties can’t be avoided, there are lots of predators.

henflix
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It’s not shown at this moment but there are man y chickens, even several fetchy roosters! Different breeds and the owner is very enthusiastic about the camera and his animals, he often talks about the individuals, name, parents, breed, personality… He likes strong, strudy breeds (fewer casulties in raptor attacks) even though they fight a lot (that’s quite spectacular especially when the roosters do it with their wonderful plumage. not like the hens aren’t pretty but still).

They eat various things and there is two pipes with corn but I don’t know more. They surely find lots of insects and whatnot in the grass.

(Allie) #20

0007047_farmgate-super-omega-mash-20kg
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Pretty much yes. My flock has this, as well as daily green veggies and whatever bugs they find.