AuroOrchard’s Free Range Chicken & Eggs
AuroOrchard is the oldest and the second largest farm of Auroville, growing a significant part of the fruits and vegetables produced in the community. It also serves as the main poultry farm of Auroville. The Mother defined Auro-Orchard’s purpose – to provide nourishment for the Auroville community. Read about AuroOrchard’s experiment with free range chicken eggs below.
Dear Community,
AuroOrchard has been providing eggs to Auroville for many years now and we are constantly learning and upgrading our practices to reflect the highest standards of poultry management.
The eggs that come from Pondy, the usual white eggs, mostly come from large poultries managing ten thousand or more chickens where they are kept in ‘battery cages‘ in which as many as 30 chickens are locked up in 1 sq.m. area throughout their life.
An alternative to this kind of industrial egg production which neglects the quality of life of the chickens and its impact on the quality of the eggs produced, is a free range system, where chickens are housed in a coop and additionally have an open area where they are ranging freely for 6 hours or more every day. This creates a natural setting for the chickens where they can express their behaviour fully and still have a secure place to sleep and lay eggs.
AuroOrchard raised chickens in battery cages from 1980s till 1990s. In early 2000s, the farm transitioned to a more ethical system of ‘deep-litter’ poultry where the chickens get more floor space and have a deeper litter which is healthier for them. Finally, in 2015, the farm introduced the ‘free-range’ system, where in addition to being in deep litter, the chickens spent around 6-8 hours every day freely in a field. However, throughout this period (about 35 years) the farm has used the same breed of chickens- BV-300 which are bred for high-production battery cage systems. Also since these birds were bought from poultry farms which raised them in cages since the beginning, these birds never fully utilised the free range at AuroOrchard as they were simply not used to it and therefore found being in the coop safer. So, while the eggs from these birds were far better than the Pondy eggs, our free-range chickens were not free-ranging as much.
The Shift to Free Range Chicken
In 2021, we experimented with another breed- Hyline Brown, which has been developed for production as well as genetically closer to the country chickens- having better resilience against diseases and naturally adapted to free-range.
We observed that these birds were far better than the white birds in their free-range behaviour, their natural resistance to diseases, their overall health and the quality of their eggs (flavour and nutrition)- nutritional analysis is attached.
This was the first time brown eggs were produced in AuroOrchard. Seeing that we needed to move from white birds/eggs to brown birds/eggs, we decided to transition to Hyline Brown completely in the coming two years. We built a new coop especially to raise Hyline Brown chicks.
This is the first batch of 450 birds that will be moved from the starter coop to the laying coop this week. In 2 weeks, a new set of day-old-chicks will be brought to the farm to prepare them in this coop for laying starting in December.
Poultry farming is riddled with difficult ethical choices and we are trying to find the best balance between giving the birds a natural environment for them to express their life fully as well as use their time on the farm to produce for Aurovilians.
We plan to expand our free range in the coming year as we have more and more brown birds on the farm.
The table shows how the AuroOrchard standards compare to other free-range standards across the world. However, our goal is not to match a standard which is a minimum goal. To be able to find the highest possibility, we need the support of the community both through engaged conversations about what kind of food we want to eat in Auroville as well as finding ways of financially supporting ethical agriculture.
In summary:
You will see less and less of white eggs coming from AuroOrchard and an increase in brown egg production from the farm in the coming year(s). At the moment, we are still receiving some brown eggs from our experimental batch and they are available directly from the farm or at PTDC. Our first full flock will start laying in about a month and we will be able to share more of these eggs with the community.
Our apologies for the long letter and thank you for your patience in going through the details.
We welcome any feedback, comments and suggestions to continue improving the poultry management and the quality of the eggs.
Thank you!
In service,
AuroOrchard team