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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
free-range
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
free-range (=from a chicken that moved around outside and ate naturally)
▪ All the chicken we serve is free-range.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
egg
▪ Buy free-range eggs if possible. 8.
▪ Even free-range eggs should be well-cooked.
▪ Home-made preserves and free-range eggs are used.
▪ A healthy breakfast is served, consisting of home-made muesli, live yogurt, wholemeal bread and free-range eggs.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
free-range hens
▪ a free-range turkey
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Also see the young lambs, various breeds of cattle and the flock of free-range hens.
▪ Buy free-range eggs if possible. 8.
▪ Even free-range eggs should be well-cooked.
▪ Next year he ends the chase in which he tries to get the free-range hens.
▪ Of course, it's not all free-range.
▪ Pheasant raised in pens tend to be slightly fattier and milder than free-range pheasant.
▪ Reichardt is currently experimenting with free-range ducks, which are raised in an open field bordered by nearby trees to provide shade.
▪ Under increasing public pressure, farmers are taking a greater interest in free-range systems which give a fairer deal to farm animals.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
free-range

free-range \free-range\ adj. permitted to graze or forage rather than being confined to a feedlot; -- of livestock and domestic poultry.

Syn: unenclosed.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
free-range

1960, from free range (n.) "open space available for free movement" (especially of domestic animals), 1821; see free (adj.) + range (n.). As a noun from 1912.

Wiktionary
free-range

a. Of, pertaining to, or produced by animals that are allowed to roam freely, rather than being confined indoors.

WordNet
free-range

adj. of livestock and domestic poultry; permitted to graze or forage rather than being confined to a feedlot [syn: unenclosed]

Usage examples of "free-range".

The country hereabouts was getting crowded for free-ranging beef if they'd spent money on this much bobwire.

Even the henhouses had been moved, and were lined up in a neat little row, free-ranging chickens efficiently pecking up every bit of stray grain in nearly every weather, and cleaning up insects in summer.

She's scrawny as a free-range chicken, but she packs a mean wallop when she gets het up.

The covers are rugged hand-laid paper of rice chaff, bamboo tailings, free-range hemp, and crystalline glacial meltwater made by wizened artisans operating out of a mist-shrouded temple hewn from living volcanic rock on some island known only to aerobically gifted, Spandex-sheathed Left Coast travel bores.

He'd been worried about free-ranging hogs the night before, knowing how Mexican rancheros grazed more kinds of critters, from cows to poultry, than most Anglo stockmen.

Soon enough, Dragon Army would be facing armies that were divided into five toons, not four, and that moved in a free-ranging style with a lot more discretion given to the toon leaders.