FAQs

Our home farm began in the hills of New Hampshire along the Connecticut River Valley. Since then, we've partnered with many farms located across New England, the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions of the U.S., and we're always expanding our reach! You can find more information about our family farms and their locations here.   

We'd love to chat with you about joining the Pete & Gerry's farm network! If you think you're a good fit, please complete our farmer application form.

We do not give our Pete & Gerry's hens hormones. In fact, it is illegal for anyone raising poultry to administer hormones. 

We do not give our hens antibiotics, and all our flocks enjoy plenty of space in clean, uncrowded, and safe barns. Offering antibiotics to laying hens as a preventative measure was adopted by factory farms to offset the filthy, disease-spreading environments that their hens experience every day. 

Before answering, we’d like to explain a little about how our farms work. We are deeply committed to how our free range and pasture-raised hens are treated from the day they are born. We take ownership of our hens when they are delivered to us at roughly 16 weeks old. Prior to joining us at our farms, these hens are hatched at a hatchery and raised by small family farms in humane pullet houses. The hatcheries which supply our hens are operated by companies who own the rights to the genetics of their hens. These hybrid breeds have been developed especially for egg-laying productivity and it is what makes commercial egg farming possible at the prices consumers currently enjoy. They are not bred to be suitable for meat as those are very different breeds. We do not have the resources or expertise to produce our own breed of egg laying hens, so we have to work with these hatcheries.

Once the chicks are hatched, they are sorted by gender. The female chicks will become egg laying hens and are transported at one day old to the pullet house. Unfortunately, there is no role for male chickens of this breed in egg farming. And, male chickens from laying breeds are not suitable for meat because they mature very slowly.  Additionally, they cannot be kept with the hens. In a free range or pasture-raised environment, the roosters tendency to fight would create a terrible, inhumane environment for hens. So, given that there is no viable market for the male chicks, the hatcheries euthanize them. To do this, the hatcheries use one of the practices recommended by the American Veterinary Medical Association.  We do not have control over which practice they use and it varies depending on the hatchery.  However, none of the practices are very appealing. We wish that there was an alternative, but there currently are no hatcheries available to us that produce chicks without male chick culling.

However, we don't believe in standing idly by and passing the blame onto hatcheries. They enable our farming families to succeed, so we must own some of the responsibility for current practices.  As part of our commitment to the humane treatment of hens from the very beginning of their life, we're serious about doing our part to end this practice. We have spoken with company leaders at the hatcheries and advocated for the end of male chick culling. The hatchery/hen genetics industry is very consolidated with only a few companies worldwide. They are headquartered in Europe where there has been much greater political will to force change. For example, the German government has stated that male chick culling will be phased out in Germany in coming years.  Germany, the Netherlands, and the European Union, in partnership with the hatchery parent companies, are providing financial support to various university research efforts occurring in Europe. There are several in-egg technologies to sex the eggs, which are rapidly progressing in testing and we expect some of them to be in widespread use in the future. We maintain contact with researchers at the University of Leipzig, Germany and Project In Ovo in the Netherlands, whose work is focused on commercializing a prototype in-egg sexing technique.

While we cannot change the entire egg industry overnight, we are committed to building a sustainable business at a scale large enough to create meaningful progress in the way laying hens are raised and treated in the U.S. Currently, over 90% of eggs consumed in the U.S. are produced in horrific caged environments. We're confident that as consumers become more interested in how our food is produced, we'll continue to see improvements in the humane and ethical treatment of farm animals from their first day to their last.

Thanks to our coops and pastures remaining spacious and clean, we rarely have this issue because our hens are healthy and well cared for. Nevertheless, our farmers keep an eye on their flocks all day long. Whenever we find a hen that is sick or injured, we segregate her, treat and then return her to the flock once she’s back to full health. In general, we have far fewer challenges with disease and injury than inhumanely raised, caged hens because our flocks enjoy access to the outdoors, fresh air and water, and endless opportunities to socialize with their friends.

We've definitely thought long and hard about the best way to deal with our hens at the end of their laying days. There are several options to consider. First, we could keep them ourselves. In order to feed and house our retired laying hens for the remainder of their lives, we estimate that the cost of a dozen eggs would be well over $12.00 at the shelf. We feel that this would not be affordable for our supporters.

Additionally, this price tag would prevent us from achieving our goal of building a sustainable business at a scale large enough to create meaningful change in the way laying hens are raised and treated in the U.S. The next option is adoption. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find a way to make this work either. While there is some interest locally in adopting hens, there is not nearly enough for us to move several thousand hens in time for the new flock to arrive. Our last option is for the hens to be sold for food. Even this option is not without difficulty as laying hens have far less meat than broiler hens, which are bred specifically for that. Many commercial egg laying hens are simply euthanized and landfilled at the end of laying. As farmers, we believe that sounds incredibly wasteful.

So, while we know some consumers will be unhappy to know that our hens go on to be used for food, we do feel it’s the most responsible thing to do. At the end of a flock’s natural laying cycle, we contract with several poultry transportation and processing companies to purchase our birds. These companies send crews to our farms to pick up the hens. The crews are trained and certified in the humane handling of poultry. At this point, the hens belong to that company, but we have worked with them to ensure that our birds are going to acceptable follow-on markets. There are currently two main markets for our birds with each receiving about half of the overall quantity. One is live poultry markets where consumers are able to select live birds for consumption. The other is a US federally inspected processing plant which specializes in processing “light poultry” including laying hens. This plant uses the latest technology to ensure that the hens are quickly and humanely slaughtered.

For consumers who want eggs from hens that are never slaughtered, we understand our eggs will not be a suitable option. We encourage these consumers to raise their own hens for which there are excellent resources available online. 

While it’s important for us to continue to move the bar on humane egg production, we also feel that it’s important to remember that over 90% of eggs consumed in the U.S. are produced in horrific caged environments. For those hens, their best day is the day when they are finally put out of their misery. We believe Adele Douglass, the founder of Certified Humane, said it best, “Our hens only have one bad day.”

While our hens are Certified Humane, and thus can spend most of their days foraging for bugs and tasty greens, they are not ruminants, like cows, and therefore cannot get 100% of their diet this way. That’s why we provide our flocks with a supplementary feed containing corn and soy. The soybeans are a great source of additional protein, while the corn provides carbohydrates. There is also a wide range of other beneficial nutrients and minerals in our feed that help to keep the hens healthy, like electrolytes and calcium. To learn more about the care we take in developing our feed mix please check out this blog post. 

We have never received any reports of corn or soy allergies being triggered by eating our eggs. But if you have soy allergies, or gluten sensitivity and questions of that nature, The American Egg Board website is a good resource. Their research suggests that despite some soy in hen feed, eggs should probably be considered gluten free and likely have undetectable levels of soy remaining in them. That said, it’s always wise to seek the advice of your own physician with anything related to allergies.

Our farms do follow a practice accepted and recommended by Certified Humane, our third-party animal welfare certifier, of mild beak trimming. This is not for our financial benefit, but for protecting the weakest members of our flocks. The goal of a correctly administered beak trim is to prevent a sharp hook from developing on the end of the beak. The scientific committee of Certified Humane determined that a very minor trim of the sharp tip of the beak on or before the chick is ten days of age is humane, and often more humane than leaving aggressive hens with a means to hurt other hens, no matter how much space available to them.

Our company is always looking to do things even better. Recently, we began transitioning to an infrared mild beak trim performed at the hatchery when the chicks are one day old. The benefits of this method include a more consistent and even trim, less stress for the hens because they don’t have to be caught and handled, and less risk of disease for the pullets transmitted from the beak trimming crews who visit multiple farms. We hope to fully convert to this method over the coming years as the hatcheries which service our small family farms upgrade their equipment.

A great resource for more detailed information about our animal welfare standards can be found at Certified Humane’s website here.

In general, pasture-raised eggs come from hens given ample access to the outdoors. Our pasture-raised flocks are raised to Certified Humane® Pasture-Raised standards, which allows them to roam freely on expansive green pastures with 108 spacious square feet of outdoor space per hen. They can exhibit natural hen behaviors like perching, dust bathing, socializing with friends, foraging for juicy worms, and soaking up sunshine. You can find more information about our pasture-raised eggs here.

Free range means what it sounds like, which is during most times of the day and year, our hens are free to roam outside as they please. This is very different from cage-free, which sounds good, and is better than being in a tiny cage, but still basically means that hens live in a massive warehouse of a barn with hundreds of thousands of other hens, in floor-to-ceiling caged enclosures, with no access to the outdoors. 

We do have to insure that our hens remain safe from predators and disease from wild birds, so we don’t allow them outside if ground predators such as fox or coyote are seen in the immediate area. And during migratory bird season, we protect our birds from exposure to diseases such as avian mites or Avian Flu. You can find more information about free range here.

Not even close. Cage-free may be the new standard in some states (though converting all of the factory farms from battery cages to cage-free will take considerable time), but it’s nothing like free range or pasture-raised. In fact, cage-free often doesn’t even mean what it says. These hens are, quite often, still packed into giant industrial-scale warehouses with floor-to-ceiling cages (generally called “aviary systems”). The only difference is that they have slightly more freedom of movement within the system. While not insignificant given how cruel the current battery cages are, this is a far cry from one of our “floor barns” where hens can go wherever they want, perch, hang out with pals, or go outside to forage for insects or dust bathe. Cage-free is simply a farm with a slightly less-cruel cage system than before. Learn more here.

All our Pete & Gerry's Organic Eggs come from humanely raised hens on small family farms. With our organic eggs, the main difference comes down to the supplemental feed offered to our hens. For organic flocks that call Pete & Gerry's home, every ingredient in their feed is 100% USDA Organic Certified. This means there are generally no synthetic pesticides used to grow the corn, soybeans, and other ingredients in their feed and everything is GMO-free. Also, the pastures our organic hens love to explore are never treated with chemical pesticides or fertilizer.  

Some natural pesticides are allowed by the USDA in special circumstances, but organic standards do not allow the use of synthetic fungicides, herbicides, or chemicals such as glyphosate (Roundup). To control pests and maintain healthy crops, our organic grain farmers employ mechanical and cultural tools like insect traps, careful crop selection, predator insects, and beneficial microorganisms. In the rare event of an insect or pest infestation, they do have a carefully selected list of approved natural pesticides which they can use. Learn more about organic eggs here.