Rainbow colored egg yolks!

[MrsChickendad]

At a poultry class at MSU last week, we learned a trick for making rainbow egg yolks. Because the yolk is made by the hen in layers, you can feed her a gel cap of paste food coloring—blue, red, green, whatever for a week; then every other day switch colors. You should get colors laid down in the yolk in the order you fed the food coloring. They said you could put coloring in the feed, but it doesn't work as well.

Anyone ever try this? I don't think I'm going to go to the trouble (sounds messy!) but it's an interesting idea.

 

[TsaLaGi Acres]

I'd love to see pic's of this!!! I'm not sure I'd go through the trouble of doing something like that, and also wonder if it would affect the hen in any way?? You could really have your green eggs and ham that way tho' lol

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

Oooo! Cool!

 

[MrsChickendad]

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Well, you would use the food grade food coloring—and probably wouldn't use a huge amount, that paste stuff goes a long way!

 

[shelleyb1969]

I wonder what happens if you incubate one of the eggs?

Will the chick come out rainbow colored?

Now THAT would give a whole new meaning to rainbow layers!

 

[theOEGBman]

Im not sure how this would work because the intestinal tract and reproductive tract go in totally different directions, even if they end up in the same place!

They dont come in contact with each other until the shell is already placed on the egg though, and by then the food consumed is already feces.

The best you'll possibly get is colored poop, maybe.

 

[redhen]

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i was thinking of that too!

 

[AccentOnHakes]

That is soo cool! Some one try this and come back wit pics in a week!

 

[dipence71]

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True but if you free range and they eat more bugs and grass ect the yolk is a deeper orange and if they get just regular feed it is a lighter yellow so in theory I think it would affect the color somehow but not sure how. Sounds like and experiment in the making LOL.

 

[MrsChickendad]

Well, the guy that told us how to do it has a phD in poultry, so I would tend to trust his information. He said something about being able to color a chick this way, too, but I was so blown away by the other information, I didn't quite hear it all. You can also get colored chicks by injecting the egg with dye and then sealing the hole over with wax, but I don't know when, how much, etc. Supposedly they hold the color until they lose the chick down.