Free Range vs. Pasture Raised in "Our Context"

written by

Jazmin Brown

posted on

March 17, 2024

The reason we say "Free-Range" instead of "Pasture-raised" is because our hens are inside a hoop house during the winter months. We find this to be the most humane and responsible way to care for our laying hens here in North Dakota- for multiple reasons.

  1. Their metabolism (along with everything else) slows down in the winter. Egg production slows down and the chickens are much less active with less sunlight and colder temps. This allows them to remain in closer quarters without difficulty while sharing body heat to stay warm. Our hoop house doesn't provide any additional heat but stays warm enough just from the body heat of the flock.
  2. The flock does not offer benefits to the landscape during wintertime. During a typical winter here in ND, the ground freezes and remains frozen from roughly January through March. During this time, nutrient cycles stop and even if there wasn't snow on the ground, the landscapes would not be able to cycle the nutrients that having the hens out on pasture provides. Instead, we embrace the rest that mother nature provides and one could more or less consider our winter months as our "fallow" season where mother nature takes it easy.

From the months of May-November, our hens our out on pasture, truly pasture-raised, and could go to Florida if they wanted to. We provide regeneratively grown grain for them to supplement, fresh water, guard dogs for their protection from predators, and our custom-made egg mobiles for protection from the elements as well as a clean and dry place to lay their eggs. 

More from the blog

Pasture Raised Pork Lard vs. Crisco

Pasture Raised Pork Lard vs. Crisco

I have to admit, I was one of those kids who was raised on margarine.  I was raised on the belief that using animal intestines for sausage casings was disgusting and I needed to make sure the frijoles at the Mexican restaurants were lard free because lard will make me fat and shouldn’t be eaten.  As a kid, you don’t really question these things, you just accept them as your parents instruct you to and carry on. Well, things started to change for me when I came to Brown’s Ranch and heard a different story for the first time.  It is actually honoring the animal to use every part of it, including the intestines and all. Why wouldn’t you want to use as much of the animal as possible if the rest of it is being used already?  Also, I learned that how the animal was raised also plays a huge part in the nutritional value of the meat. Grassfed beef is completely different from grain fed in so many more ways than I could ever imagine.  The same goes for pork raised on pasture and everything else we grow on our farm. Here’s the link to a blog that Paul wrote about the pigs on pasture a few years ago that you might find entertaining. If you want to read about our fatty acid profile testing as well, you can follow this link. As we head into the holiday baking season, I wanted to share a quick comparison of our pastured pork lard to Crisco, the most commonly used vegetable shortening in baking. If you think about it, soybean oil and palm oil are naturally liquid at room temperature. That's why they're called oils. So why is Crisco a solid at room temp? Well it's because of the hydrogenation that's done which creates trans fats that are completely unnatural and something that our bodies don't know what to do with; causing inflammation. *More about TBHQ: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved TBHQ as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). However, some research suggests that long-term exposure to high doses of TBHQ can have negative health effects, including:  Cytotoxic effects Genotoxic effects Carcinogenic effects Mutagenic effects **Source for this: https://www.nourishedwithnatur... Will you stand with us to create a Crisco free holiday season this year? Order your Pastured Pork Lard instead! Completely rendered and ready to use. Just keep it in the fridge for convenient usage.  Sidenote: Refried beans made with lard are THE BEST. Traditional Mexican cuisine typically still uses pork lard because of its high smoke point, superior texture and flavor, and overall superior versatility to any other cooking oil.  

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