It's more of a legal definition thing. "Cage free" has nothing regulating how much time they must spend out of the cage in order to earn the designation. Maybe they let they roam open fields pecking around for insects, maybe they are let out of their cage for 3 minutes per month, no way to tell really. Vegetarian fed just means GMO corn and soy, which is what most of them are fed anyway.
Pasture raised doesn't necessarily mean they live outside or anything. Typically, it means they roam around scavenging during the day and go into their coop at night. But again, with the loosely regulated labels, a personal inspection is really the only reliable way to know.
As "heartless economist"like as this may sound, I'd be willing to bet that they would have the natural predator thing figured out if they were raising them. Otherwise it simply wouldn't be economical. Definitely something to consider if you want to raise your own though. When I was a kid in Washington state we had some chickens. They were basically pets. We ate the eggs only, but never the chickens. We would take them out to roam regularly, always supervised, even walk them on the beach lol, and they slept in a large pen at night. The one time a raccoon managed to get it open, however, yes we were left with a pretty gruesome scene that morning.
