I wouldn't think so. Pigments are formed from chemicals in hemoglobin and controlled by genetics.
Like anything else in the body, food is broken down into the chemical constituents and reformulated. It isn't direct. Just like the misguided idea that consuming rhino horn acts as an aphrodisiac. There just isn't a direct line between ingesting the horn and libido. Anything consumed is first digested and becomes a variety of chemicals.
Research has shown that there are only two pigments in eggshell colors - biliverdin and protoporphyrin. I'm not sure about that but there isn't a single dietary supplement that increases either of those.
If the chemicals aren't available in the system, the pigments can't be created from thin air.
With that in mind, a chicken fed a commercial feed containing the 40 nutrients chickens are known to need and no other intake like that obtained by free ranging may be missing some of the micronutrients not essential for health but missing some of the chemistry needed to make things like shell pigment.
A farmer in Catalonia once told me that he gets darker intense reddish maroon color on his Penedesenca eggs when he supplements the diet with goji berries. If that is true, what that tells me is that there are micronutrients in those and other so called super foods that give the body other things than what is in feed that it needs to fulfill its true predilection or propensity - if that makes sense.
For dark egg layers, normally the color is more intense early in the season. That would indicate that the chemistry available in the body gets played out as the season progresses.
Those are just my thoughts with no direct scientific research behind it.
Last edited:
