Strange orange ring in my hens yolks

[Chickie Baby]

One of my faithful customers sent me this picture this morning as she boiled several eggs. These eggs were laid last week. It is very strange that all but one had this strange dark orange ring in the yolk.

Any suggestions of what this could be? My hens are not sick that I'm aware. The only odd thing I've fed them a couple plus weeks ago was boiled crawfish. Whole crawfish that were leftover from a party.
Could this have caused the ring?
Any help is appreciated!

 

[Chickie Baby]

Are all the eggs the same age or collected over a period of time? Were the eggs all laid at or soon after feeding the crawdads? You say they were boiled, did you use crab boil or cayenne/chili spices? Just a guess, but I'm betting the combo of the natural things is crawdads that turn them red when cooked and the spices in your boil added pigment to the yolks. Since this was a "one of" occurrence, you just got a layer of these pigments that settled into a ring when cooked.

I've never seen rings, but we have fed shrimp and crawdads often before and noted a marked increase in yolk color intensity. Matter of fact, I fed my chicks shrimp tails at least twice the last month. We have a friend that drives in from the Beaumont area frequently and brings us our fresh gulf seafood fix.

Thank you for responding... I was beginning to think no one had input, so thank you!
The eggs are the same age and were all collected last week. When the crawfish was boiled, we used crab boil.

I have fed my chickens shrimp peelings before and this didn't happen. This was the first time I had fed them crawfish (whole). The ring is really throwing me off. It just seems as, like you mentioned, I could expect to see a slight increase in the yolk color as a whole. I was just very concerned about this distinct ring and the picture really doesn't do it justice, it is very bright orange.

I'm going to boil some tonight that are laid today or yesterday and see if all is back to normal. If not, I'll be back to the drawing board.

 

[aart]

Thank you for responding... I was beginning to think no one had input

Don't be too impatient ...sometimes it takes a full day to get a response.
Looks like thread had a lot of views but no one had the experience to answer.

Am following along, very interesting situation, curious to see if you figure it out.
Might be just a funky glitch, never to be replicated.

 

[aldarita]

Ever since I started steaming eggs (rather than boiling them) I have noticed that they peel better being fresh and all. I am following this thread, curious to know what caused the ring, I believe it was the crawdadys

 

[NorthTexasWink]

Ok, yes I think crustaceans do probably make the yolks darker. It is what makes flamingos pink, after all. I bred tropical fish once, and you feed them krill and other crustaceans to pump up their color and condition. The shells (chitinous) of shellfish are very much like insect shells (also chitinous) and almost pure protein with hefty doses of calcium and iodine, plus lots of healthy trace minerals. The crab boil has red pepper and spices that have lots of pigment too.

As for "sharpness", well birds eat rocks and bugs and snakes and mice and lizards and fish. All have spines, teeth, bones, sharp edges, etc. As long as they orient things or get them pointed the "right way" I'm guessing it all works out. My little chicks did fine with the shrimp tails, some raw and some cooked. I've fed countless birds such things and never thought twice about it.

Again, having no experience with steaming eggs, I'm only guessing about it being a slower cooking method and perhaps allowing enough time for certain pigments to precipitate or stratify into a ring. But it makes sense to me, kind of like Saturn's rings.

Edited to add: Acolored zone in a raw egg would make me think of early embryonic development. I'd look carefully for veins too.

 

[aart]

I will bravely toss the crustaceuous to the chooks!
I usually only have raw shrimp tails/shells, so I really shouldn't worry,
'tis tissue paper compared to crab or lobster.

Steaming takes no longer, just use less water and a steamer basket in your pot, 10-20 minutes after water boils.

From all the partially developed hatching eggs I've opened, I have never seen a blood red yolks. Veins form around the yolk.

 

[GC-Raptor]

Yep it starts when yolk is very tiny. GC

 

[aart]

but I still have issues with them being hard to peel.

Dunking in an ice water bath as soon as steaming is done, bonking it on the fat end to break the shell before ice bath will help even more with peeling.

 

[NorthTexasWink]

So my mother called to chat and I asked her about this orange ring or orange center in yolks thing. Guess what!? She said ours had all kinds of rings and "sunsets in the egg yolks". Her words. "You remember Cookie (a cousin) was always so good about bringing us redfish and shrimp and all from Beaumont? (We lived in the Brazos valley then, about 100 miles north of Houston.) Well I'd send him off with some eggs and whatever was good in the garden. Those hens always had prettier eggs after we fed them those seafood scraps."

So. Mamma says it's the seafood, and thinks it gets "put in the eggs in layers while the eggs go through that hen's plumbing" layer by layer. So if fed on seafood once, then not again, you'd get a ring like a growth ring in a tree? She thinks yes.

This is the kind of knowledge that gets lost when we lose both contact with our elders and contact with growing our own food.

 

[NorthTexasWink]

My mom did describe the yolks as often looking like "sunsets". Multiple rings, different colors. I was a kid, observant kid, but I had other priorities, as a kid does. I don't remember the "sunsets", just that our eggs were not usually light yellow yolked but deep-yellow-gold-to-orange-to-almost-red.
If different types of shellfish (or seafood?) make different colors or intensity of colors, or if amounts matter, rings? Adding red pepper makes a difference? Cooked versus raw? How much and how often to get a ring? To get the whole yolk deeply pigmented? So many variables! I'm definitely gonna fiddle with this when my hens start laying.
Wild speculation is the only kind worth indulging in!