egg yolk color

[noblehillfarm]

My mom got 2 white leghorns from a swap they were very thin and bald. They have been with her for a month and have gained weight and are getting their feathers back. My question is all their eggs yolk is a yellow creamy pus color and cloudy. The eggs are collected twice a day so its not cause they are old Any ideas?

 

[pipermark]

Sorry no.

 

[Judy]

see if this helps:

http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/lvstk2/ep127.pdf

 

[noblehillfarm]

Thanks that site was one I printed for reference but couldnt find one that seemed to match. The yolk is perfectly placed and perfect consitancey just creamy yellow like an egg thats been sitting in the sun for a week

 

[Buckguy20]

Feeding them greens will make the yolk a darker more orange color. That is why free range chickens usually have darker yolks than pen birds. I keep mine penned but I do give them green grass and green table scraps.
I have heard that iceberg lettuce is not good for them but I don't know.

 

[threehorses]

I'd say they need more nutrition possibly. Some people feed colored foods high in beta carotene to help make the yolks more orange.

But nutrition rolls over to the yolk - the more nutrition, the more color. Were they ever wormed? You might consider worming them (since you're probably not going to eat these eggs anyway) with Wazine (piperazine 17%) twice - once, and then again in 14 days. Or once with fenbendazole (Safe-Guard paste horse wormer). With the fenbendazole, you give one pea-sized piece of paste in the beak for each bird. Repeat in 10 days.

Then do that twice a year at least.

Worms steal the nutrition from birds. Because they were in bad shape before, it takes a while to build that nutrition back up. Especially if the birds are laying.

Also, if you give them a treat of yogurt once a week, they'll absorb their food better and be slightly more disease resistant. The calcium and vitamin D in the yogurt help with egg shells. The live bacteria in the plain yogurt help with all food utilization as the bacteria are the workers that literally break down and make available what the gizzard grinds.

When you worm, you can feed those eggs back to them for the next two weeks or so. Boil them and them mash them up - feed that mixed with yogurt and a little sprinkle of crumbles in the morning. They'll be getting rich nutrition from the eggs and yogurt as well as protein to rebuild their feathers. It's ok to feed them their own eggs back after the worming or medicating.

By the way, the hens should be on a diet that consists of 95% good quality and strongly fresh smelling laying pellets (any protein percentage is fine). The other 5% of the diet can be treats like the eggs, yogurt, greens (don't feed a lot of spinach or kale), whole oats (great for condition and nice protein level). Be sure to provide them a separate container of granite grit (available in great little small bags at most feedstores) and mix that with oyster shell (also available in a similar small bag). Both serve different purposes - oyster shell being too soft to be grit, grit not providing calcium like oyster shell does. Hens can self-supplement a little calcium with the oyster shell. The yogurt helps provide vitamin D3 to make that calcium be absorbed.

Scratch, should you choose to use it, should only be given out in handfuls for them to "scratch" out of the bedding and keep them interested in the yard. It will otherwise dilute their nutrition and cause problems - like colorless yolks, bad egg shells eventually, bad feathering, etc. Thought you might want to know.

 

[noblehillfarm]

Great thanks for the advice ill give it a shot

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
Please let me know which of the advice you use. The different bits work in conjunction and are purposefully grouped - so I recommend the package deal.

But in any case, feedback is very very important to me. It's important that advice I give continues to work for others. (I can't deal with recommending something I myself haven't tried multiple times and used and/or gotten lots of feedback on first). So I'd love to know how it goes. Feel free to email me if you'd like. My email is at the bottom of the page.

Thanks!