Nope, you're not looking at it with rose-colored glasses, there really is a big taste and color difference between home grown eggs and store-bought eggs. Weeds and bugs and all those sorts of natural things chickens will eat while free ranging cause the better taste, and the color comes primarily from the greenery they eat. If you'll ever notice, the yolks stick up a lot higher and the whole egg is more cohesive in home-grown eggs too.
As for the eggs from the feed store, quite often free ranging hens will eat all the greenery from around their yard, leading to those pale eggs. Another cause could be that that the eggs aren't from what we consider free-range hens. The hens may just not be in cages, able to move around a pen on their own, but still packed tightly in a building or a yard. There's a lot of double-speak in egg-labeling. Also, color does not mean everything in any store-bought eggs, a frequent trick is to feed the hens marigold flower petals which basically dye the eggs yolks a richer, yellower color. Interestingly, often people allergic to eggs are actually allergic to the marigold petals the chickens ate, not the actual eggs themselves.
To make sure your eggs taste good and the hens stay healthy, just feed chicken feed/laying mix, little corn since it's not very good for them and can make them too fat to lay (though it is handy to help them stay warm in the winter), and ensure they have access to greenery to eat. Greenery should be non-poisonous weeds, clover is popular, grass that's not allowed to get over 1 foot tall (just keep it mowed on a high setting if possible), and things like horse apples are always good since it's a bit predigested and alfalfa adds nice color. Once you're used to your chickens' eggs, you'll likely be able to see a big difference in the eggs during the winter when they eat more feed versus spring when they eat a lot of the grasses coming up.
--- In CHICKENS-101@yahoogroups.com, "LEE BAHR" <pulsarxp@...> wrote:
>
> As I mentioned in an earlier post, I too am a newbie. Won't have any chickens until 2011. This diet thing interests me a lot. Besides the fun of having chickens, the taste of the eggs plays a part in wanting a few chickens around the place too. My grandparents had free range chickens and the taste of their egg's yolks were wonderful compaired to an egg purchased at the grocery store today. The yolks were also very orange and not yellow. I know they fed the hens a lot of corn. (Probably not a balanced diet unless the hens made up for it when "free ranging)". (I doubt they fed the hens balanced diet chicken feed. I'm thinking it was probably pure cracked corn).
>
> Near my lake house there is a feed store selling "free range" chicken eggs for human consumption. Frankly, they taste no better then eggs from the grocery store and they too are yellow and not orange in color. I have no idea what the hens producing these eggs eat. Seems to me if they really were "free range," the yolks would look different then those from a grocery store.
>
> That said, how do I get eggs from my hens to taste as good as the one my grandparents produced yet give the hens a balanced diet? I know a balanced diet does not mean a pure corn diet. Maybe I am just imagining how good those eggs tasted many years ago.
>
> Lee
> Coldspring, Tx
>
CHICKENS-101@yahoogroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment