WARSAW — A healthy chicken is a happy chicken and happy chickens lay better quality eggs, according to John Brunnquell, founder and president of Egg Innovations and the Blue Sky Family Farms brand.

Egg Innovations has locations at West CR 100N, Warsaw and an organic feed mill at 578 N. Jefferson St., Cromwell, which is the largest certified organic feed mill in Indiana and the second largest in the nation. The company recently opened a 10-acre free range operation in Fort Wayne called Mahlon Graber Farm.

The farm holds 20,000 chickens; 2,000 per acre. The operation allows the birds to “be birds.” They can flap their wings, forage, scratch, dust-bathe and interact socially with other chickens.

Brunnquell says that allowing a chicken the room to do all these things makes for eggs with a thicker shell, high orange yolks and thick egg whites. Caged egg programs, which make up more than 90 percent of eggs sold in America, produce basic white eggs and the chickens are confined in an indoor cage with just 8 by 10 inches of space per bird.

Brunnquell asked in an interview with InkFree, “If I gave you an office with bare, white walls, no pictures, no window how would the quality of your work be? Now, if I gave you an office with colorful decorated walls and a window, how would your quality of work differ?” According to Brunnquell it’s the same with chickens. A chicken that is enclosed wing to wing with other birds the quality of their work, the egg, suffers.

Egg Innovations is a 100 percent free-range and pasture-raised egg company. Egg Innovations also supports family farmers and is an industry-leading partner providing some of the longest farmer contracts and financial return for those smaller, family farms. To learn more about Egg Innovations, visit the website.

Free-range and pasture-raised eggs are at grocery stores throughout Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky at these retailers; Kroger, Martin’s, Pete’s Fresh Market, Festival Foods, Sendik’s Food Market, and Strak & Van Til.