Pasture Raised Chicken Nutrition: How Feed Affects Omega-6, DHA & B Vitamins
Recent testing on popular pasture-raised eggs sparked a viral conversation about omega-6 fats and what "pasture-raised" really means. We had the same question, but about our chicken. So we ran the numbers.
Here's something most people don't know: pasture-raised doesn't mean corn and soy-free. Up until last year, the label didn't even require that birds spend time on actual pasture. (We're serious)
Even chickens with outdoor access are often fed commodity crops. And corn and soy drive omega-6s up no matter how clean the marketing looks on the front of the package.
This is bigger than eggs. If feed can change the nutrient profile of eggs this dramatically, what is it doing to the chicken meat you're eating?
We think that's the right question to be asking. And we built Primal Pastures around answering it...not just with claims, but with how we actually raise our birds.
What Our Birds Actually Eat
Our chickens spend their entire lives on pasture, foraging for bugs, worms, insects, and rooted vegetative cover. They're moved to fresh ground daily in mobile coops, mimicking the natural movement of chickens.
Their supplemental feed is a custom-formulated, certified organic blend completely free of corn, soy, and seed oils.
Our Custom Feed Blend
Organic field peas, organic wheat, organic barley, organic oats, organic alfalfa meal, fish meal, organic olive oil, organic dehydrated kelp meal, salt, minerals, vitamins, and probiotics.
No fillers. No shortcuts. The inputs matter, and we've always believed the outputs would prove it. Now we have the data to back that up.
Edacious Food Lab Independent Study
Primal Pastures Chicken Breast vs. Store-Bought "Pasture-Raised" Chicken Breast · 2025
The Numbers Don't Lie.
Our chicken breast vs. store-bought pasture-raised
Source: Edacious Food Lab Study, 2025. Primal Pastures Chicken Breast vs. Store-Bought Chicken Breast.
Half the omega-6. Double the DHA. Over ten times the B vitamins. These are substantial differences in nutrient density.
The B2 and B6 numbers in particular caught us off guard. Riboflavin (B2) and B6 are critical for energy metabolism, brain function, and immune health. Our chicken breast had more than 10 times the amount found in the store-bought comparison. That's what real pasture access, real feed, and real standards produce.
Why the Feed Changes Everything
The conventional poultry industry is built on speed and cost. Corn and soy are cheap, calorie-dense, and grow fast, which makes them ideal inputs for a commodity system. But they're also high in linoleic acid (omega-6), and that fat profile passes directly into the animal's tissue.
When you swap corn and soy for field peas, oats, barley, fish meal, and olive oil, and add actual foraging time on living pasture, the fatty acid and micronutrient profile of the meat shifts dramatically.
This is also why "pasture-raised" alone isn't enough of an answer. A bird can have outdoor access and still eat corn and soy all day. The label tells you about the housing system. It doesn't tell you about the feed.
The proof is in the pasture.
We've always raised our birds this way because we believed it was the way nature intended these animals to live. Now we have independent lab data confirming what we suspected: our inputs produce a fundamentally different product.
You deserve to know what you're actually eating. That's why we ran the study and it's why we're sharing every number.
