What colour is an egg yolk? Do you think you know? And do you know why?

[@kd1841]

In Texas many eggs come from chicken houses in Arkansas. The color is usually a pale yellow of 1 or 2. However, if you get pasture raised they are often 12-14. They color of my hens eggs changes during the year. They are a lighter 7-9 during winter due to much less grass and bugs to eat and can go to 14 during spring and summer. What a fun informative video. ❤️❤️🐔

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you so much! And greetings to you in Texas - we lived in Pine Bluff in the 80s. I always thought Southerners are the nicest people 🙂

[@victorn6065]

I must say, the audio quality of your newer videos if much better than your old ones. The content in older videos is just as good though!

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you. This one was easy because it was all just voice-over so I could record that indoors. I have been thinking about re-doing some of my older videos.

[@din1903]

Another great informative and well researched video, Thank you. Entertainment and an education 😃

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you so much 🙂

[@ScaryFear]

I prefer the darker golden colors like 14 and on. I never was a fan of the pale yellow from the grocery, but it wasn't until I started keeping chickens years ago that I found out they could have orange yolks. I bought a bunch of marigolds and when I gave them to my girls they would not eat them. Oh no. Well I have a bunch of seeds and I will plant them anyway.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Marigolds are so pretty and great at protecting vegetables from bugs so I always have some in my garden 🙂

[@Sandra-kv4mi]

Nice video! Aways looking forward to the next one.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you. Have a great day 🙂

[@karenhancock542]

Interesting video, thanks! I like my yokes orange-ish, not the darkest. I live in Oregon, U.S.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you 🙂 I couldn't find any reliable information about the States.

[@CatherineOgrodowic]

Thank you for sharing! Very interesting ❤❤

[@eulerizeit]

This was really interesting.

[@chickensinmygarden]

I'm glad you thought so. Thank you for watching and commenting 🙂

[@ashleyb1274]

I love your videos! Very informative.❤

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you so much 🙂

[@brianbarbe9665]

Very informative! Thanks for taking the time to create this!

[@chickensinmygarden]

It was fun to find out and share. Thanks for watching 🙂

[@discobikerAndRosie]

Idk if I have a preference, but most of my chickens lay dark yolks. They're fed very well.

[@chickensinmygarden]

They must be 🙂

[@One_Flew_West]

Excellent, clear, and informative video. Thank you!

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you very much 😊

[@codewarrior65]

Very interesting. I live in the midwest in the USA. I prefer darker more orange yokes probably around 12 - 15. Growing up on a farm we fed our chickens a lot of garden leafy waste and grass clippings as well. Indeed we also fed them vegetable scraps. Today we combine the aforementioned with mulch. Gives the girls something to scratch around in. Chickens make good compost if managed.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you for that. Yes I believe chickens can make good compost but somehow I've never been able to manage it properly - either the vegetable matter dries out (probably not chopped small enough) or it just rots.

[@nicobass1966]

Thank you so much

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thanks for watching 🙂

[@louisagauger623]

South-central Idaho, USA. We prefer orange yolks!

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thanks 🙂 And have a good evening 🙂

[@garyvee6023]

I feed my chickens dried powdered chilli in their morning mash at least twice a week. It makes their eggs bright.., almost fluro orange..., I would say my chickens eggs yolks are 14 to 16.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Maybe the YolkFan needs a new colour for Fluoro ! 😀

[@janinawaz4596]

Thank you for the fascinating treatise on yolk color! I'm in the US and I prefer yolks 13-16. I'm biased toward a darker yolk because the most delicious eggs I've ever eaten were from my own backyard hens, and they laid eggs in that color range. Their feed didn't have coloring agents, however they did browse in the garden and compost bin all day. The least tasty eggs I've ever eaten had the palest yolks.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you for the information and your compliment. I agree, well fed chickens who eat a variety of natural foods lay the yummiest eggs 🙂

[@thinkoutsidethecontainer]

I have a flock of 6 hens...they are given the same diet (except for when they free range for a few hours every week, who knows what they eat while free-ranging), and I have one hen (the only one with with dark black feathers, all the others are mostly white-colored) that just started laying eggs a couple weeks ago and all her egg yolks so far produce a VERY pale yellow color, paler then I've ever seen.

[@chickensinmygarden]

If it's way down on the YolkFan colour chart, about 1 or less, she's probably not absorbing the nutrients in her food properly. If it's not abnormal, she's probably just not eating as many bugs and weeds as the others. But VERY pale yellow sounds like a digestion problem.

[@sketchionic6356]

just saw your 6 years old video about broody hen vs incubator, and you do love making videos.

[@chickensinmygarden]

I sure do. And I hope people like watching them 🙂

[@sketchionic6356]

@@chickensinmygarden Yes we do.

[@TT3TT3]

I like the darkest yolks.🇨🇦

[@chickensinmygarden]

They seem "more" somehow, don't they 😊

[@gaetiekn]

Very interesting and informative as always! 😊 Thank you very much! I live in France and I don't mind the colour of the yolk, as long as the egg is good to eat, I am not picky! 😄

[@chickensinmygarden]

Merci bien pour ça. Bonne journée 🙂

[@makellen7972]

Comercial eggs in Finland are a very pale yellow... Which is depressing. The first time my in-laws got some free range's eggs and saw the difference they were shocked.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Wow! I guess there are not too many marigolds on Finnish chicken farms 🙂

[@makellen7972]

@@chickensinmygarden not too many. But I believe it is because almost all of them are raised indoors due to the cold climate with many months of snow on the ground (november-april) plus the disease control that dictates birds must be kept in a close enviroment from March to the end of May (to avoid contact with migratory wild birds). So that leaves only a few months of free ranging time :D

[@pseudopetrus]

I like a rich colour- Canada.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you. I couldn't find information about Canada 🙂

[@saethman]

Didn't know I was wondering about this until I watched your video :) My asian wife say that everyone,obviously, prefers the super-dark orange one (as a Scandinavian I prefer slightly brighter than what she does, but slightly darker than what I'm "supposed to"). Colours do matter though - a friend once baked a cake where he added food-dye to the cream, making part of the cream pale/light green and part of it pink. The cake did not taste good... lol

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you for that information, that's fascinating. And yes definitely colour is very important in how we perceive flavour. If you want to dive deep into this subject there's a book called Gastrophysics by Charles Spencer. Here's a review www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-strange-science-of-gastrophysics/

[@nadoosh60]

In Saudi Arabia, the color is darker in winter and pale in summer due to great consumption of water during extreme heat.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Wow! That's fascinating!

[@leahnichol6665]

This is very interesting. I remember in my youth, ‘bought’ eggs were white and had a pale yellow yolk. I grew up on a farm with our own chickens and eggs and the yolks were more orange. I always thought there was more nutrition in the darker yolks. Now I suspect there was more nutrition in the home grown eggs because the chickens got a more varied diet and the eggs back then would have been battery hen eggs. I believe the nutrition for those battery hens has been improved and there are now a wide range of eggs on the shelf: cage eggs, free range eggs, both indoor and outdoor ( for more money), organic eggs: free range indoor only or outdoor, and omega 3 eggs. We can still get white eggs here in British. Columbia, Canada. 🇨🇦. I would say my preference is for about a 12 on the scale.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you. I wasn't able to find any information about Canada.

[@leahnichol6665]

@@chickensinmygarden ❤️

[@JuliaChilled]

Great video! Thank you. We’ve got lots of marigolds growing in the garden to give to our ladies, but they simply aren’t interested in eating them, same with pumpkin! Any tips on how to encourage them to eat them? They can be so fussy and spoilt at times 🐓

[@chickensinmygarden]

Mine actually aren't keen on fresh marigolds either. (Yes, mine are also spoilt.) You can do what the feed manufacturers do - dry the petals then crunch them up into their feed. It's unusual for them not to like pumpkin, but I do know they like it even more if it's cooked. You could try that. (No salt of course.) I find it's the same with carrots and beetroot - they will eat them raw when they are bored but love them cooked.

[@JuliaChilled]

@@chickensinmygarden oh a great idea! I’ll try boiling up some plain pumpkin and drying out the marigolds! thank you so much for your reply :)

[@kencross25]

I live on the Gulf Coast in the USA. My family prefer yolks between (DSM Color Chart) numbers 11 - 14 which are local market sourced. eggs.

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thanks for that. For some reason it was hard to find information about the USA.

[@tabuoey]

whenever I watched an American cooking show for example, I always thought that the eggs looked bad and wondered if there was something wrong with them, since the yolk was so pale. I live in Australia and prefer a dark yolk

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you. It was odd that I found stats for NZ but not Australia, even though it was a European company. Have a great day 🙂

[@rahaf6686]

i live in saudi arabia but eggs here r kinda on the middle! i do love dark yolks tho bc they taste best and theyre the ones my chickens lay :)

[@chickensinmygarden]

Oh yes! The ones our chickens lay are always absolutely the best! Have a great day 🙂

[@harrymonk6]

Mines a yellowly off white

[@chickensinmygarden]

Wow! What country do you live in?

[@jenyang927]

I have a question why the free range backyard eggs taste better? What else it may have than commercial eggs except carotenoid?

[@chickensinmygarden]

Many of the nutrients, vitamins, minerals etc that the chickens eat turn up in their eggs - caretenoids are just one example. Maybe also a happy healthy hen makes different eggs than a stressed one just because of her better metabolism. Certainly we accept this is true of animals we eat directly - think of how we like the taste of grass-fed beef, or Bresse chicken. Even wild salmon has darker flesh than the pale pink of wild salmon. It could be similar?

[@jenyang927]

@@chickensinmygarden Absolutely agree！thanks

[@vickyannpaintingwithoils]

My hens lay closer to fourteen or fifteen on the scale. I see the darker ones to be fresher, tastier, and richer, even though I have no reason to believe that is more than my personal preference, and anecdotal observations. Great video!

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thank you. I didn't mention taste because it's so subjective, but certainly the colour of food affects how much we enjoy it 🙂

[@vickyannpaintingwithoils]

@@chickensinmygarden So true! People enjoy purple colored grape juice over the white even though I have neve squished a grape and gotten purple. Our brains are very interesting indeed. This was so informative.

[@chickensinmygarden]

There have been some fun experiments dying food odd colours. Even if it doesn't affect the taste people don't like to eat blue eggs or green meat etc. 😀

[@vickyannpaintingwithoils]

Haha! You know it!

[@zaeemaftabsiddiqui1364]

we eat 2 to 8 number in pakistan

[@chickensinmygarden]

Wow, thanks. I guess you think those dark orange yolks look weird!

[@zaeemaftabsiddiqui1364]

@@chickensinmygarden local chicken has those yolks and these are very expensive eggs number 10 to 13

[@chickensinmygarden]

Do you know what the local chickens eat?

[@zaeemaftabsiddiqui1364]

@@chickensinmygarden they are aseels and eat grass and all waste of kitchen

[@chickensinmygarden]

Ah, then that's why their yolks are so dark. Probably the commercial hens are eating white corn

[@BadrFee-zs6qg]

Morocco 🇲🇦 Middle East dark orange better

[@chickensinmygarden]

Thanks for that. I guess those pale yolks look odd to you 😊

[@BadrFee-zs6qg]

You so good at explaining. thank you. ​@@chickensinmygarden

[@chickensinmygarden]

Aaww, thank you 😊