Vital Farms began with one small family farm and a mission to bring ethically produced food to the table. Over the years, we believe we’ve played an important role in improving the lives of people, animals, and the planet by prioritizing our stakeholders—farmers and suppliers, crewmembers, communities and the environment, customers and consumers, and stockholders—and treating them as partners. We partner with over 600 farmers who share our passion for animal welfare and sustainable farming practices. Starting when the girls arrive at one of these farms at about 17 weeks of age, we think they live just about the best life possible for a laying hen—they enjoy acres of open pasture, fresh green grass, and the freedom to come and go from comfortable barns as they please. But farming is not always as straightforward as the picture postcard of hens roaming in fields of flowers. While we’ve prided ourselves in never taking the easy way out and in doing what we can to change our small corner of the farming world whenever we see the opportunity, there are biological and economic realities, and, at times, the two collide. As the amount and quality of eggs our hens lay naturally decline with age, there comes a point when the hens can no longer produce eggs in an economically viable way for our farm partners. In our early days, when we had just a couple of farm partners located near urban areas, we would place an advertisement on Craig’s List and find homes for our retiring ladies with backyard farmers. Today, for several reasons including current FDA restrictions, that method no longer makes sense. So, when retirement time comes for these laying hens, our farmer partners have little choice but to ‘retire’ their flock en masse either through an acceptable method of euthanasia or by selling them to pet food companies, which we believe helps make use of this precious resource. We consider the end of our hens lives as sacred as the rest of their time with us and will advocate for any viable alternatives to a hens’ post-laying life that are sustainable for our farm partners, the hens, and communities at large.
