What to Feed them to Make Yolks Darker?

[Naser]

carrots I guess

 

[egg-centric]

marigold petals. easy to grow and chickens love em. (and makes orange yolks).

 

[candr01]

Green egg yolks??!! Yuck. Good to know

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I've found that butternut squash does the trick.

My parents harvest squash in their large garden by the trailer full, so we eat them all fall and winter.

Whenever a squash is processed at their house or ours, the peels, seeds, bulb, etc. all get put aside for "the ladies".

They usually get steamed to soften them up...and the chickens love 'em, and the eggs have a deep yellow color that is really something to see.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Like has been said - anything with carotenoids or their precursors will do it. It's important to remember though, that the bright orange color has nothing to do with egg quality or nutrition.

Brightly colored yolks are a good sales tool, but if you're just eating eggs, the color of the yolk is pretty much irrelevant. (as an aside, a diet high in acorns will turn egg yolks a moldy green color - which is terrible for sales).

So, so true.
In Africa, they use white corn rather than yellow as a primary feed ingredient resulting in extremely pale yolks.
I have Chinese friends that remember the dark yolks from their free range hens back home and are disappointed with US store eggs because of the yolk color.
I add paprika to the feed in winter when there is no forage just in case I'm selling eggs to my Chinese acquaintances.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I've found that butternut squash does the trick.

My parents harvest squash in their large garden by the trailer full, so we eat them all fall and winter.

Whenever a squash is processed at their house or ours, the peels, seeds, bulb, etc. all get put aside for "the ladies".

They usually get steamed to soften them up...and the chickens love 'em, and the eggs have a deep yellow color that is really something to see.

Squash is a great source of carotenoids.

 

[cmom]

This is an old thread but I would like to share a story. I show my birds at poultry shows and at one of my first shows the judge marked on my coop tag "leg color" I wasn't sure about it so I asked the judge what he meant by that and he told me the legs weren't yellow enough. I started feeding my birds from then on with feed with marigold in it. From then on the legs have been super yellow. The yolks are orange. People buy my eggs a lot because of the yolk color.