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Comment by archagon | Hacker News Reader

Well, yeah, but I imagine "what the chicken ate" and "how idyllic their lives were" are pretty closely related. In any case, I've never once found a firm orange yolk in my eggs — supermarket, farmer's market, or otherwise. Joel is probably doing something right here. (Or maybe his eggs are just really fresh, I don't know.)

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Good pasture and good nutrition helps for the firmness. If you want a rich, golden yolk, feed them marigold petals. It doesn't take much to really darken the yolk, and our birds seem to like them.

We get a deep, rich golden color from simply giving them cracked corn. That holds all winter as well, as we supplement heavily with cracked corn to help them stay warm.

Yes. I feed mine extra scratch in winter (cracked corn, wheat and something else I forget) to keep their body temperature up in the cold and it does keep the yolks looking good.

Also chicken scraps make a difference.

I picked up a dozen at the feed store last time I was there and except for the fact that the shells were brown or green, the eggs themselves were just like supermarket eggs in appearance and taste. Typical for being raised on the cheapest feed out there.

In the same book, he mentions that they have to keep their chickens inside during the winter, which means no bright orange color to the yolks during those months. Try again when the weather is warm?

Just really fresh I think. Backyard chicken eggs from my coworker are like this. I don't know what the big deal about the firmness of the yolk is, but I'm not a pro chef. Tastes like an egg to me. When she gives me eggs, they last a really long time. She says that the way to tell if their old is by how fragile the yolk is. If it breaks going into the pan, then it's bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras#Controversy

Yolk color is a red herring, you can feed chickens in cages many things to affect the color of the yolk, and it has nothing to do with quality of life.

Generally quality of feed correlates to quality of life. Factory farmers aren't going to take the time to make sure a chicken gets greens and reds and yellows in their diet.

Generally. Of course.

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