Which one of the above eggs is from the grocery store and which one is from one of the chickens in my yard?
And why is there a difference in yolk color?
Find the answers in the comments section in a few days.
Grocery store vs. Backyard chicken egg
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Diet! The one on the right is a chicken (presumably backyard version) that eats a lot of greens.
The egg on the left was bought at Costco; the egg on the right is from one of the chickens that roams our yard.
Why does our chicken’s egg have a darker yolk? Seems like an easy question to answer, but I have yet to find a comprehensive and reliable explanation. Do a web search and you’ll find lots of people making statements that they don’t back up.
Joel Salatin is a farmer who has raised laying hens in a variety of ways for many decades. His observations I trust. He keeps his egg-laying chickens in a mobile coop that is surrounded by pasture. “In any given dozen [eggs],” he says, “we’ll have several extremely dark orange yolks (indicating high Omega 3 fatty acids–that’s good). But we’ll also have lighter shades and even a pale egg occasionally. What’s the difference? The pale eggs are coming from lazy birds that just hang around the feeders and lounge inside.” (Source: http://blog.mcmurrayhatchery.com/2013/09/16/the-perfect-chicken-by-joel-salatin/)
The eggs from Costco came from chickens that live in a warehouse and eat “feed” — dry bits like those fed to pet cats and dogs. In contrast, my chickens walk around the yard eating whatever they want. I see them eating a lot of short blades of grass, leaves of broccoli, earwigs, worms, pomegranate seeds. So the diet is very different.
But also, as my chickens walk the yard they’re getting a lot of sun, just as with Salatin’s chickens that are out of their coop foraging. The Costco chickens get no sun. Could that make a difference in yolk color too?
The right is home grown egg vs left store egg. Darker yoke. I have 12 hens right now. And the taste is dramatically different. My numbers go up and down. And I thought I would sell them but where I live it’s a very competitive market,(in the country-ish and everyone has chickens) and a lot of work. Not a money maker unless you have 30 or more and that’s a lot of work. I keep enough to have great compost, eggs for friends and family and the fun factor. But feed costs are going up all the time.