Why are we getting deep orange egg yolks?

Check out this amazing egg yolk:

Our chickens have been getting restaurant scraps along with fresh brassica greens, and over the last couple of weeks, the yolks have become very rich and dark. It’s gotta be either the food waste or the greens or both.

This article explains why egg yolks are darker or lighter in color.

If you asked most people what color egg yolks are, they would likely answer yellow.

Yolks have always been associated with the color yellow, which is unfortunate because backyard chicken keepers know better.

Backyard chicken keepers know that yolks can—and should—be a bright, bold orange, and those bright, bold orange yolks are a sign of happy, healthy hens.

In an unscientific home experiment, I compared my pasture-foraging, insect-pecking, soil-scratching, whole grain-feeding chickens’ yolks to the yolks of both their “free-ranging” and factory-farmed counterparts.

The results were clearly visible: Yolks from my homegrown eggs were not only darker, but also fuller and thicker. Even the eggshells were denser and harder to crack.

But what’s the big deal about orange yolks?

Turns out that besides being a coveted color, orange yolks can be an indication of a well balanced and highly nutritious diet.

You can read the rest here.

The scraps we’ve been feeding them are from a Chinese buffet. The birds love it. Noodles and fried rice and bits of vegetables and lots of cooked meat. We don’t even have to feed them a regular chicken feed ration anymore. I throw them some green leaves from the garden when I’m out there, but they’re mostly living on Chinese food now.

There’s usually enough to feed both the chickens and the pigs, though not always. If we can manage to get more from another outlet, we could probably avoid buying any feed at all.

I’m just going to stick to the “high nutrition” explanation for the deep orange yolks, otherwise I might suspect the weirdly red sweet-and-sour sauce.

Nope. It’s definitely the high nutrition.

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