" Pastured poultry" is a term promoted by farmer/author Joel Salatin for broiler chickens raised on grass pasture for all of their lives except for the initial brooding period. has caused some people to look for alternative terms. The broadness of "free range" in the U.S. Likewise, free-range egg producers have no common standard on what the term means. Free-range chicken eggs, however, have no legal definition in the United States. There is no requirement for access to pasture, and there may be access to only dirt or gravel. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) requires that chickens raised for their meat have access to the outside in order to receive the free-range certification.
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For example, according to Jull, "The most effective measure of preventing cannibalism seems to be to give the birds good grass range." De-beaking was invented to prevent cannibalism for birds not on free range, and the need for de-beaking can be seen as a litmus test for whether the chickens' environment is sufficiently "free-range-like."
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Yarding, as well as floorless portable chicken pens (" chicken tractors") may have some of the benefits of free-range livestock but, in reality, the methods have little in common with the free-range method.Ī behavioral definition of free range is perhaps the most useful: "chickens kept with a fence that restricts their movements very little." This has practical implications. In poultry-keeping, "free range" is widely confused with yarding, which means keeping poultry in fenced yards. As of 2017 what constitutes raising an animal "free range" is almost entirely decided by the producer of that product, and is frequently inconsistent with consumer ideas of what the term means.įree range meat chickens seek shade on a U.S. There have been proposals to regulate USDA labeling of products as free range within the United States.
The term "free range" is mainly used as a marketing term rather than a husbandry term, meaning something on the order of, "low stocking density," "pasture-raised," "grass-fed," "old-fashioned," "humanely raised," etc. The Certified Humane Program offers third-party certification for producers who meet provides minimum standards, including providing access to grass pastures, traditional nests, and "dust areas to perform natural behaviors." The USDA regulations do not specify the quality or size of the outside range nor the duration of time an animal must have access to the outside. In the United States, the USDA free range regulations currently apply only to poultry and indicate that the animal has been allowed access to the outside. Nutritional science resulted in the increased use of confinement for other livestock species in much the same way. Some large commercial breeding flocks were reared on pasture into the 1950s. Before that, green feed and sunshine (for the vitamin D) were necessary to provide the necessary vitamin content. In the case of poultry, free range was the dominant system until the discovery of vitamins A and D in the 1920s, which allowed confinement to be practised successfully on a commercial scale. The generally poor understanding of nutrition and diseases before the twentieth century made it difficult to raise many livestock species without giving them access to a varied diet, and the labor of keeping livestock in confinement and carrying all their feed to them was prohibitive except for high-profit animals such as dairy cattle. If one allows "free range" to include "herding", free range was a typical husbandry method at least until the development of barbed wire and chicken wire. In many agriculture-based economies, free-range livestock are quite common.įree range ducks in Hainan Province, China In ranching, free-range livestock are permitted to roam without being fenced in, as opposed to intensive animal farming practices such as the concentrated animal feeding operation. There is a diet where the practitioner only eats meat from free-range sources called ethical omnivorism. The term is used in two senses that do not overlap completely: as a farmer-centric description of husbandry methods, and as a consumer-centric description of them. Free range may apply to meat, eggs or dairy farming. On many farms, the outdoors ranging area is fenced, thereby technically making this an enclosure, however, free range systems usually offer the opportunity for the extensive locomotion and sunlight that is otherwise prevented by indoor housing systems. A small flock of mixed free-range chickens being fed outdoorsįree range denotes a method of farming husbandry where the animals, for at least part of the day, can roam freely outdoors, rather than being confined in an enclosure for 24 hours each day.
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