My 13 yo son loves trivia games and downloaded a trivia app for his ipod. It has about ten thousand useless facts. He showed me fact # 1032 (among many others ) and it stated that by "feeding certain dyes to chickens, you could color the yolks of their eggs. " I thought this sounded like total hogwash and said so...he wants me to ask the "chicken people". So, anybody think this is possible? I don't.
I don't know about feeding it, though I've heard of it before, however you can dye the yolks AND the chicks inside (after incubating of course) if you insert dye directly into the egg.
Well, to some extent, various pigmentation precursors can be fed at high levels to change the color of the yolk. You'll not get a blue one, but you can surely get a bright orange and a nearly white yolk depending on their feed. As for injecting color for colored chicks it is not in the yolk. That goes inside the chick and is taken up as nutrients. Colored chicks is via pigmentation added to the albumen.
To get orangey yolks you feed them lots a greens and protien. Also some breeds lay oranger yolks naturnaly. My leghorns lay yellow yolks no matter what I feed them. But no you can't internaly die just the yolks. At least I've never heard of it.
I've never heard of feeding chickens dye to dye the eggs before. That just sounds silly to me. Personally, I'd have to see it to believe it. So yeah, it's probably hogwash, as you say.
