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Comment by dzhiurgis | Hacker News Reader

I'm a sucker for premium orange yolk eggs. My partner is sucker for buying eggs from a guy who grows them in his backyard.

Sometimes, especially when making creamy scrambled eggs I can almost taste fishy or shellfish flavour (not something I like). We are based in NZ and I've heard people use sea shells as a source of calcium for hens, but I find hard to believe that it could be it.

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This will happen if you feed your chickens salmon or other fish. I have chickens and yes I occasionally my sons or wife will feed them left overs and it may be some salmon skin we did not eat, some fish bones and heads that we did not eat, etc. When we do this the eggs take on that taste. I don't like it either and if it does happen then I feed those eggs to the dog....

You should give them back to the hens. They prefer them fresh but they'll eat them cooked too. Producing an egg takes a lot of nutrients. They'll any that crack, to help replenish. They'll eventually eat the shells too, which helps with their digestion.

This is a good way to teach hens that "eggs are food" and they may start eating their own eggs before you can get to them.

I have not had that experience. None of my current hens, or the dozens I've had, will eat them unless they're cracked. I toss them eggs every day and of the egg bounces without breaking, they will tap it with their beak and then leave it be. I know it can happen but I've not had it happen in the four or five years I've been keeping chickens. Although we wouldn't mind. We have them as pets and don't eat many of the eggs.

That's good that you haven't had that experience. We haven't either with our hens, but enough of our neighbors have had that experience that I've received the "don't let hens eat eggs" advice from more than one one person who had firsthand experience with a hen getting accustomed to eating eggs, then breaking open most/all eggs before they could be collected, and then that hen had to be killed to save the eggs from the other hens.

Give fresh eggs a couple of days to a week to mellow. The flavour of a just-layed egg from a backyard chicken with a rich diet can be pretty intense.

The "fishy" taste is likely indicative of a higher omega 3 content, you get the same taste from 100% grass fed and finished beef and buffalo due to the higher omega 3 content.

Omega-3 doesn't taste like fish unless it's literally fish oil, which is often an additive to improve the 3-6 ratio of foods. Flax seed doesn't taste like fish...

Grass fed beef tasting "fishy"? I've never experienced that and can't imagine how it would work.

In my experience cheaper grass fed beef in the US commonly tastes gamey which can be interpreted as fishy.

More expensive grass fed doesn't have this problem, so it likely has to do with diet or the cut.

The difference could also be due to how long the beef is hung or aged. Beef tasting too “gamey” might not be hung long enough (suggestion made last night by small farmer friends, fwiw).

i guess it depends on what type of fish you eat. I often eat relatively fresh salmon. I wouldn't say it tastes fishy even though its fish. It tasty oily, so much oil comes out in the baking process.

> 100% grass fed and finished beef

I am not sure this is true. I live in a country (NZ) where most cattle are grass fed their entire lives. This is supposed to mean higher omega 3 content but I have never tasted a fishy taste. Not even once.

If grass fed and fishy taste are corrolated, I suspect there is another cause. Maybe organic fish containing grass fertiliser?

We just started smelling/tasting some fishy flavor with eggs from one of our hens. We suspected flaxseed in the feed we were giving, and switching feeds seems to have fixed it.

Brown egg layers are apparently more prone to this issue

I believe it's the choline. It tastes fishy and eggs have a very large content of it.

I don't know that backyard eggs would have more of it but the slight fishy taste in eggs is (and liver) is due to it.

Why would you be surprised? Why throw out scrap fish and seafood when you could sell it as chicken feed?

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