by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers
Which leads me to an anecdote I find interesting. I raise chickens. My older child can immediately tell the taste difference between an egg from one of our chickens that have a varied diet and one from the store. And that's without even seeing them. As soon as you break the eggs open, it's obvious which is which: ours have deep orange yolks vs the pale yellow store bought ones.
tl;dr: eggs from chickens eating bugs and grass taste far different than from chickens raised on cheap feed.
Is it even possible to get true free range eggs anywhere? I know plenty say cage free, but that could just be opening the cage for an hour or so in a day just to make the marketing claim.
Drive into the country and look for the hand-painted sign that says, "EGGS 4 SALE". Selling traditionally farmed eggs to city people is a relatively common way for rural people to make a little cash on the side, or for 4H kids to learn the business. You can think of it like a lemonade stand without the pity purchases.
You may need to bring your own containers, tolerate an occasionally unreliable supply, buy only at a few oddly-scheduled times during the week, and pay in cash. Also, don't tell your foodie friends where you found them.
Sure. There are some CSA (community-supported agriculture) farms around where you can order eggs from pastured chickens (raised on actual pasture as opposed to the poorly-defined "free range") and they will ship to you periodically.
I believe cage free is just what it says: they are cooped together as a flock, but not in individual cages.
Also as the other commenter says, drive around a rural area and you'll likely see any number of farms advertising fresh eggs. However, even there, many of them keep the chickens in a run or coop and they are fed mostly chicken feed. Better living conditions than the average commercial battery farm to be sure, but the eggs won't taste that much different.
Which leads me to an anecdote I find interesting. I raise chickens. My older child can immediately tell the taste difference between an egg from one of our chickens that have a varied diet and one from the store. And that's without even seeing them. As soon as you break the eggs open, it's obvious which is which: ours have deep orange yolks vs the pale yellow store bought ones.
tl;dr: eggs from chickens eating bugs and grass taste far different than from chickens raised on cheap feed.