Greene Jungle Farm focuses on raising our livestock to the highest animal welfare! This is more than just the treatment the animal receives; it means providing for their physical and mental needs. There are many facets to an animal’s welfare from breeding and rearing to nutrition and slaughter practices. These practices are forefront and center when you come to visit our Laying hens. Spacious living quarters are routinely moved around our pasture providing ample opportunities for natural behaviors like dust baths, insect hunting, and seed foraging. While it may be entertaining for us, dust bathing is an important ritual for chickens, serving the purpose of keeping their feathers clean, and keeping them free of mites, lice, and other parasites. We make our chicken feed on the farm, using local whole grains as a base, and adding unusual nourishing and healthy components like probiotics and seaweed to name a few. This is just the start of the attention we give to the needs of the chickens which results in the best tasting eggs you can place on your table.
The chickens live symbiotically with our Khatadin and St Croix sheep, a breed on the watch list of the livestock conservancy. We rotationally graze our sheep using movable shelters and portable fencing across our pastures in the spring and throughout the grass growing season together with our hens which move in afterwards to feast on the bugs, larvae, and remaining forage left behind by the sheep. As rapid grass growth continues, we rotate to maximize animal nutrition during this high-quality grass season. This produces food with potentially higher levels of A and B vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, stearic acid, and conjugated Linoleic acids, etc. (more on this later) which have been documented to be extremely beneficial to your lasting health. The true beauty of this system is in watching these animals outdoors breathing fresh air, feeling sunshine on their backs as they graze and socialize in a stress-free environmentally enhancing lifestyle.