Orange to yellow

[meckler]

I have 14 chickens of varying breeds, and they have free range of 1 acre of grass and 9 acres of woods for at least 1/2 of the day. I supplement their diet with feed from a local store that guarantees no gmo, but they cannot call it "organic". I couldn't go to my usual supplier, so I bought the "better" pellets at tractor supply. Recently I have noticed that my girls are laying eggs that have a more yellow yolk rather than their usual orange yolk! What is happening here!?!? Do I need a supplement? They have oyster shells, so the shells are hard. I ran out of scratch and haven't given it to them in about 3 weeks... Could the tractor supply brand food be that bad to influence the nutrition/color of my eggs? I figured since they free range so much it wouldn't hurt them. Any insight would be appreciated! Thank you!

 

[DrTacosMD]

The color difference is due to less of a type of yellow/orange plant pigment. So there may have been some sort of plant or weed that your chicken had a lot of access too that had a lot of that pigment. TBH if you're free ranging your eggs are probably much healthier regardless of yolk color. The yolk most directly points to amount of plant pigment and only indirectly to egg quality. Many battery cage chicken are fed lots of artificial versions of the plant pigment and have rich orange yolks but that definitely doesn't meant that their egg qualities are better than my backyard chicken eggs.