Chickens swarm around Keith and Katie Bien as they arrive with a food bucket and empty egg basket. After gathering eggs, Katie Bien tosses out grain and picks up bird after bird as they surround her, hugging them to her chest. These chickens have it made. They are free to roam 150 acres of pasture and woods. They have plenty of food and a warm, safe place to sleep at night. All they have to do in return is lay eggs -- something they would do anyway.
Keith and Katie Bien already had a vegetable farm on Wildwood, Ga., land that has been in Katie's family for three generations. They also had about 50 chickens. A year ago they decided to increase their flock and took a class from a Virginia farmer to learn his method of farming chickens.
They were inspired by the farmer's methods for "a sustainable, humane system that's good for the land, good for the chickens and good for the people who are eating the eggs," Katie said.
The chickens roam free during the day and find shelter in two coops at night. The couple moves the coops every other day to keep the birds in fresh pasture. Great Pyrenees dogs guard them from predators.
The Biens have eight varieties of chickens, totaling 900 birds. Now, to care for them, they keep the same hours as their chickens. "Their day is when the sun is up," Keith said. The chickens come in from the pasture and head into the coops to roost when the sun goes down.
"My chickens are like my babies, I just love them. They are so sweet. They have personalities," Katie said.
The birds eat only natural foods that they forage, which is supplemented with non-GMO, non-soy feed. Their eggs are higher in vitamin D, protein and Omega 3's, and lower in cholesterol than those produced commercially, Keith said.
Commercial producers often use feed that is full of genetically modified organisms and chemicals, and they are subsidized, enabling them to provide eggs at a lower cost, Katie says. "We are going above and beyond to get a more expensive food for the chickens," she said.
They typically sell out of eggs at $6 per dozen each Wednesday at the Main Street Farmers Market. Egg production is dropping now because of shorter days and colder temperatures, but they were getting 150-200 dozen each week in the summer, Keith said.
"Their diet is what a chicken's diet should be -- really diverse, which gives them optimum health, which makes their eggs very healthy," Keith said.
Katie Bien feeds chickens as Keith Bien looks on at their Wildwood Harvest farm.