America Goes Natural FACE TO FACE WITH AN OLD CHICKEN MAN

By Manny Pinol

It was almost dusk today when Jim and I found a small chicken farm tucked in the mountainous part of the small town of Azalea in Oregon, about 130 miles south of Portland.

Our visit to this remote farm is part of the series of farm visits I am making to learn more about organic chicken growing and the production of brown organic eggs.

The chicken farm, owned by 78-year-old Jim Garrett, produces brown organic eggs for the local market and he raises a potpourri of lines of backyard chicken layers from the Aracaunas, Leghorns, Plymouths, Rhode Island Reds to the reputed best laying line, the Black Australorps.

“I have been raising chicken all my life and I love these creatures,” said Jim who lives in an 8-acre farm with his wife and his brother-in-law, Kenny Archer and the latter’s family.

“I’ve seen the days when we raised chicken the natural way,” Jim said.

Over the years, Kenny said the demand for chicken meat and eggs in America has become so high that the breeders shortened the gestation period of chicken for the meat market.

“First, broiler chicken would be ready to be slaughtered in 60 days, then it went down to 45 and now it’s only 27 days,” said Kenny, who said that in his younger years in Arkansas, he worked in a hatchery.

“You can’t grow chickens to that size in 27 days without giving them growth hormones,” Kenny said.

Jim added that egg production used to be in the free-range where the hens get all of the sunlight and the green grass to produce healthy eggs.

“Now, you get eggs which are yellow instead of orange because these are produced by hens which are placed in cages and they don’t enjoy the sunlight,” Jim said.

“It is easy to tell when an egg is produced by penned layers as compared to those produced by free range hens,” Jim added.

He said that when the egg is broken, the egg produced by a penned laying hen would have a yellowish colored yoke and its white would splatter and spread all over the plate.

“The natural produced egg’s yoke would be orange-colored and its white would stick and gather around it and that is because it has a lot of Vitamin A,” he said.

But both men agree that America is coming full circle in chicken and egg production and consumption.

“We could not keep up with our production of the brown eggs produced by hens which are grown and raised in the free-range,” Jim said.

“But I am growing old. I have to tell the grocery store that I may not be able to deliver the brown eggs anymore,” Jim, who used to deliver 75 dozens of brown eggs a week to the supermarket which paid him $3.25 per dozen.

But both Jim and Kenny are happy that before they could retire from the life-long job of raising free-range chicken and producing organic eggs, many Americans are starting to realize the effects of their folly of falling into the trap laid by “quickie” food.

Today, most Americans are willing to pay an extra premium for a free-range backyard chicken and the brown egg which has a yellow yoke and a white that does not splatter when the egg is broken.

Many Americans now also prefer free-ranged backyard chicken which are naturally grown over the 27-day-old broiler which is pumped with a lot of feeds and minerals to reach the weight of over 1 kilo in a litle over three weeks.

Happily for the small farmers, this new health awareness is also creeping all over Europe now and in most parts of the developed world where people have grown conscious of the food they eat.

In the years to come, the backyard chicken raiser in the Philippines, hopefully, will also have his day.

(Photo caption: Old chicken man Jim Garrett and his free-ranged egg layers in his small farm in Azalea, Oregon.)