The beauty of country living offers the experience of eating organic chicken, but it is also available in cities in small quantities. Organic chickens generally just roam to find food. The people who raise these chickens use rice, corn, or whatever food is available to feed them. They just call the chickens some other way and the chickens come running like they’re panicking for food. Then they throw away the grains or any food and each chicken picks up as many as it can. When the regular meal is over, the chickens roam and search the ground for any available food that may be plants, insects, seeds and, if the area is coastal, small live fish and small shellfish.
Organic chickens are high in beneficial cholesterol-lowering fats and increased amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin A. Their eggs taste much better than commercially raised chickens given regular doses of antibiotics, vaccines, and other medications. Although the meat of most native chickens takes longer to cook, its flavor is unmatched by 28-day-old broilers confined in crowded poultry houses where they also release their waste.
Native organic chickens are much smaller and grow much slower. While it only takes 28 days to harvest a broiler, native chicken generally takes at least six months. For this reason, indigenous chickens cannot be raised commercially. Since the supply cannot meet the demand requirements of the population that consumes chicken meat, no large poultry farmer is interested in venturing into this type of poultry farming. Sellers of organic chickens generally rely on groups of small farmers for their supply and at this time were unable to meet the growing consumer demand for organic chickens.
For organic chicken consumers, eating organic chicken not only provides health benefits, but also a better ecosystem. Free-range chickens capture insects that can be harmful to plants, collect crop residues, and help fertilize the soil through their compost. By the way, farms that use chicken manure as fertilizer don’t necessarily grow organic crops. Chicken manure is purchased from commercial poultry farms that use chemicals and drugs that have been shown to be harmful to the human body.
Since the majority of organic chicken suppliers are small farmers, organic chicken consumers also help build the rural economy and the income potential of small farmers. Consumers also contribute indirectly to the protection and conservation of the environment because growing organic chickens does not produce the air pollution that is common in poultry farms. There are also no flies that spread germs and organisms that cause illness in people.
