If you have never eaten really nice eggs, please try and get some!

[BadGardener]

OK I'm going to be a bit evangelical here.
About 9 months ago dh brought a box of eggs home which were a gift from one of his colleagues who keeps chickens.
They were a complete revelation - enormous dark yellow yolks, and flavour which made us realise we had been eating crap eggs all our lives. It was like the difference between instant coffee and real coffee. I made a batch of perfectly normal fairy cakes for dd's birthday party and all the grown-ups were raving about how nice they were, simply because of the eggs (I am not that great at baking.)

We had always bought free-range/organic eggs where possible, but honestly, the ones you buy in supermarkets are nothing like these were.

In the end I had to get my own hens, just to ensure our supply

It bothers me that there are so many people going through life not knowing how nice eggs can be. Please, if you have never had Really Nice Eggs, find a neighbour who keeps chickens, or stop at one of those places by the road where a backyard chicken keeper sells their eggs from their gate, and get some that are only a few days old and just see how nice they are [deranged evangelical smile]

We would need a bigger garden, ergo to move house. Which is a bit drastic. When house prices fall a bit, though....
I'd really like an orchard for them all to mill around in, so I don't have to worry about the state of the lawn.

oh and you can't divorce him, unless you have someone else you can trust to feed them when you're away.

When my sister had chickens, the egss she gave my mum and me some amazing eggs. She then moved and rehomed thema dn they aren't secure enough to get anymore.
I don't have any grass space, so it's out for me to have any
Would love them though.

you can give them greens to get the lovely deep yolks.

My garden is 12ft by 20ft with a mainly raised bed which is shale. it's a shame, but I don't think it would be fair.
If it was all paved, I would gladly have chickens. Maybe in a couple of years.

I wasinvited over here to apply my egg-centricity (I am perhaps the UK's only purposeful buyer of caged eggs - Tesco 30 a week, very cheap, lovely - I'm not on commission)....

Life is too short to stuff a mushroom and most of us aren't rich enough to fuss over types of eggs we eat. It's a middle class nothing better to do type of thing because they have nothing better in their lives than fussing over eggs and here I can identify with the poor. Imagine what you'd save over 40 years of buying caged cheaper eggs and particularly the time spent growing your own as it were.

{Is that contribution to the anti-free range lobby sufficient?)

Anyway we all pick our financial and life priorities and I feel pretty healthy in my 40s on all the caged eggs I eat a week so far, touch wood..... I once had a long conversation with one of the UK's principal egg buyers actually. Interesting man. I think it was when we had a lot of concerns about that disease chickens pass around and said all this home keeping of hens would hardly help public health. I can't even remember the name of the disease now such is the advanced stage of my dementia.

Assolutely right Xenia. It's much better to have chickens stuck in battery farms being pumped full of chemicals and living shitty lives and we really shouldn't bother aspiring to anything else.

Crikey Xenia. What are you doing with eggs to get through 30 a week? We buy free range and get through a box of six per week, occasionally a couple more if I bake a cake. As for the "poor" argument - poor, schmoor. If those people never ever buy lager, fags or junk food I might sympathise, but I don't think that's the case is it? Caged eggs should be banned full stop for direct sale to consumers and if that leads to a supply problem we should simply eat fewer of them. It was an egg a week during rationing wasn't it?

Animals don't have souls. Most farmers are pretty good to their animals but a lot of people have been overly influenced by propaganda from those who have a vested interest in making you all think about stuff like that and global warming and all the other peddled lies and you lap it up like lambs to the slaughter.. or am I mixing metaphors?

I have eggs for breakfast every day and I have 5 children so we eat a lot of eggs. They're lovely. Tesco caged eggs. Wonderful.

Class A, £146 for 15 of them which is just under 10p an egg and quite delicious.

(This thread is interrupted on behalf of the Caged Hen Marketing Board)

I believe as humans we have a duty to reduce the harm we do to the lives around us - whether human, animal or plant.

So I keep free ranging hens, as have millions of people before me.

Arguably more harm is done by free range and a huge heap of free range were recently found just to be caged anyway so you're just paying extra to line the pocket of the person doing the re boxing half the time but it's a free country. I can be a poster girl for the caged eggs and others can support supposed free range or indeed breed their own. Just don't assume everyone thinks the case is made out that free range is best.

I said I keep free ranging hens - I don't buy any eggs.

Just because someone commits a criminal offence of fraud in egg-labeling does not make the original product somehow worse.

And I firmly believe truly free-ranged eggs are nothing like caged-hen eggs. They are strikingly different in colour and flavour, as op suggests.

Oh good god, now we have to visualise Xenia gobbling down 30 factory farmed eggs a week as she cackles "animals have no souls". Is there no end to her monstrousness?

animals do have souls Xenia, diff of opinion

BadGardener - I told you not to summon The Xenia

[LoThThThGoDel]

has to be somewhere

In short, no.

You wouldn't eat veg grown in similar conditions so why are eggs different?

And if you can't take pleasure from the small things in life like good food then you really do need to evaluate your priorities.

well the Tesco eggs taste great but we'll just have to agree to differ and what about all those supposedly free range, millions of them that weren't?