Lee, I recently gave my chickens a bale of fresh alfalfa hay to nibble on, and it has made a HUGE difference in the color of their egg yolks. My chickens don't free range (even if they did there wouldn't be much to eat on my property) so their diet was layer pellets, kitchen scraps like apple cores and bread crusts, occasional greens from my veggie garden, and red wriggler worms from my worm bin. Their yolks were quite pale. Post alfalfa, the flavor has also improved with the deeper color. We made homemade hollandaise sauce for Christmas dinner and it had the richest flavor ever, as well as the most gorgeous golden color. Even the potato pancakes were yellow from the deep color of the egg yolks, and I don't think I've ever seen that before. So if you can't pasture your chickens, I highly recommend buying them alfalfa hay. It's the greens that do the trick. The "free range" chickens that provide the eggs at your feed store probably don't have any pasture to forage in.
Your grandparents' chickens, being free-range, ate mostly insects and plants. The corn was an addition to that basic diet. It was more important in the winter when insects and plants were harder to come by, and the extra carbohydrates helped keep them warm. But unless you have a lot of really rich pasture, you will probably want to make the basis of their diet a good layer feed. It's a more complete diet than plain corn and will help them be more productive.
Maureen and the girls at the
Rowdy Girls Ranch
Marana, AZ
In a message dated 12/29/2010 12:50:12 P.M. US Mountain Standard Tim, pulsarxp@embarqmail.com writes:
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
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