People hatch quail eggs, duck eggs, and chicken eggs from markets in every state I've lived in, for fun or farm. Asian markets tend to be the best source for fertilized, viable, eggs (eg 99 Ranch Market, H-mart, etc).
I'm no expert in chicken rearing but isn't it quite likely that the more "free range" your eggs are raised the more chance of accidental having a fertalized egg? Seems much less likely in caged hens (at significant harm to the chicken of course).
"Free range" isn't super free ranging, as such - it tends to be achieved still with very restrictive conditions. With ones which really properly can roam about in a large outdoor area, yeah it seems the likelihood would go up, but I think those are fairly unusual at least in the UK
I happen to live near one of the larger “proper” free range farms - Sherston Free Range eggs [1]. The photos on their website really don’t lie - in fact, there’s a local pub that often has “visits” from the chickens, wandering over from their fields. They lay some of the nicest eggs around too!
Free range is not necessarily what a person would expect of free range. The farm can pack 9 hens per square meter with some outdoor space available at times.
I have just pulled a box of this very brand of duck eggs from my kitchen. There are no stamps on the eggs.
The code on the carton is UK.1.666.L . This is not a Lion mark, and the code is not in the right format for a Lion egg. I don't know whether different schemes apply for duck eggs. The "1" is suggestive.
It's still misleading in Sweden, even though we're in the EU. Here it's called "frigående" (free-walking, or free-range) which for hens just means that they are not kept in small cages. The free-range version with access to the outdoor is called "ecological" (16% of the hens).
When people buy eggs in Sweden from "free-walking" hens, they expect them to be outdoors in the sun, but instead they are kept indoors with a maximum of 9 hens per square meter and up to 10.000 hens in a barn.
It's not easy to find an English description of this, so here are some Swedish articles:
This is interesting. The EU regulations include a table with what each grade can be called in different languages (p 24 of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSL...). The grade called 'barn' in English can be called 'frigående inne' (free indoors) in Swedish. The English term 'free range' officially corresponds to 'frigående ute'.
In most of these languages, the term for barn eggs (hens indoors without cages) seems to refer to ground, soil, or scratching. Swedish seems to be an outlier in applying a word like 'free' to this grade.
I assume that "free indoors" is like keeping them in a massive warehouse where they can walk around, but with a other 9,999 animals around them. Technically they can walk around, realistically they can't make half a step before bumping to 10 other animals, and they poop all over, thus the needs for antibiotics. The "out in the open" is not happening for most farms.
In Finland none of the official terms uses "free" or equivalent, but barn eggs are still permitted to be branded "free hens' eggs" in marketing. So the "free" there doesn't mean "free range", just "non-caged". Myself, I just buy organic eggs these days.
In any case the pasture will not look flawless all around the year unless you have a lot of water. Chicken eat it, will scratch until reach rock and will make holes to take sunbaths. In summer the soil will have a lot of dry patches and in a harsh winter the hens will prefer to stay inside all day. They are very sociable animals but there will be always a few omega hens looking a little plucked.
Anyone thinking that "zero animal cruelty" is a realistic goal in a flock of chickens, is delusional. They have a different relationship with pain than us.
Most free range eggs are nothing more than branding just like fair trade coffee.
If it’s a large industrial farm free range or not the likelihood of the eggs being fertilized is pretty much zero, smaller farmstead/homestead farms that sell their eggs directly or to resellers can often have fertilized eggs tho.
There are pretty solid legal requirements for describing an egg as "free range" within the EU (or UK), which are clear on things like the stocking density, access to outdoor space etc.
I don't think there is any reasonable basis for your view that this is "nothing more than branding".
If Morgan Spurlock¹ is correct, then in the US, it is indeed closer to branding than a qualitatively different life for the chickens, from the perspective of an ordinary consumer.
Free range eggs are also more expensive- so if someone claims the free range label they get more money. If they commit fraud by not keeping to the standards they are committing a crime.
And even without violations like this the regulation is extremely murky and the requirements are laughable the UK standard for free range eggs allows for no more than 13 hens per square meter not only that even if it was accounted for correctly it isn’t any better than regular farming the regulation grants a lot of freedom for how this is calculated and most farms reach that figure by counting in areas that the chickens can’t actually roam in.
But sure if 13 hens per meter is free range to you then yes the U.K. and the EU have very strict regulations indeed.
You can draw no useful information about standards from an article like that – producers who violate legal standards should be prosecuted, and that's an orthogonal issue to the standards themselves.
I also don't think that your statements are actually correct. My understanding is that "13 hens per square meter" is actually "9 hens per square meter" since 2012, and this is the requirement for indoor space only – in addition, "free range eggs" have pretty clear stipulations for the level of outdoor access which is required (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...).
I mean, if your complaint is that producers are exploiting loopholes to get around regulations, or that they're just not following them and there's insufficient enforcement, then sure – that's a problem, and one that should be fixed. But it's harder to do that while not being clear about the current state of regulation and the problems faced.
The EU legal requirement for free-range eggs is a maximum stocking density of 9 hens per square meter, plus 4 square meters per hen of outdoor space, and continuous access to the outdoors during daylight hours.
Point E 5.3 specifies no more than 9 hens per square metre of indoor space. If I'm reading correctly, this applies to both free-range and barn hens. Free range hens also need outdoor space at a density of no more than 2500 birds per hectare, which works out to 4 square metres per bird (although 1 m2 is allowed for birds under 21 weeks old). That's also the EU rule for 'free range' eggs.
The RSPCA spec is about 100 pages of details about popholes, lighting, water, and so on. Whether it's effectively enforced, I can't tell, but it's not a joke.
Edit: My bad, the Guardian article also says 9 birds per square metre for free range eggs. Free-range chickens raised for meat can be kept at a higher density than laying hens: 13 per square metre indoors and 1 square metre outdoor space. But eggs are the topic here.
The RSPCA's opinion on the matter is irrelevant. The UK is bound by EU law. While it will be able to deviate as of January, this is an area that, in practice, it will probably be unwilling to move on in the short to medium; it would be politically damaging (because one argument against Brexit is that it will lead to diminished food standards) for limited returns.
