[Liam_86]

Just recently starting with hens, they are producing light yellow yolks. I only got them on saturday

How do i produce good yolks? Anyone got any tips?

[colliewobbles]

We got ex-batts which were the same.  We found that the greatly improved lifestyle plus feeding lots of scraps like greens, salad etc. resulted in fantastic yolks anyway!  Ours are really tasty though.

Our most recent additions have been with us a month and already the eggs are improving.

Donna

[Bodger]

Its very very simple. All you have to do is to run your birds on fresh grass. Our customers rave about the colour of the  yolks in the eggs that we sell and thats all we do.

[OhLaLa]

Let them peck at the grass as much as they want, and add cut maize to their rations.
     

[Bionic]

I have lovely yellow yolks and my birds are fed mixed corn ad lib. They also free range across the field and garden every day.

[Mays]

mine are free range, and all have the same diet, I have noticed some hens just have a darker yolk, as does their offspring x

[taz08]

yea all above ,, if you have buttercups  and they eat them ,, you should see the colour then!!!

[Roxy]

It does take a little time.....but its worth the wait.  My egg customers love the deep colour of our free range eggs - have been asked if I inject the eggs with something to make them that colour!!
 
When asked my secret - I tell them .....nothing special - just the fact that they go out 12 hours a day on grass

[Liam_86]

as always thanks for the help, maybe im being impatient as they have only been on grass for 5 days

i have bought some mixed corn though as well now

thanks

[colliewobbles]

I think it would take a few months to really get them dark yellow.  We have had our most recent ex-batts for about 4-5 weeks and can still clearly tell the difference between their eggs and those of our older hens.

[harefarm]

We got our hens at 16 weeks nearly 4 weeks ago. They were barn reared. Within a few days of being allowed out on the grass we started to see the difference. I was happy to start selling the eggs after a week (at the start there wasn't much difference in colour between the yolks and the whites). The customers have told me they haven't had such lovely rich eggs for a long time. All I did was let them out on grass and gave them a little corn in the evening.

[chrismahon]

Some feeds contain permitted chemical yolk colourants. That's why we switched our feed to one without chemicals (Smallholder) which uses natural ingredients, one of which is a grass extract if I remember correctly. But any greenery will do as some of ours in fixed runs used to get Savoy cabbage leaves, which made the yolks a golden yellow (we grew cabbages for that purpose).

[sokel]

mine are free range, and all have the same diet, I have noticed some hens just have a darker yolk, as does their offspring x

Ours are the same, some produce yellow yolks others orange yolks and they are all fed/have access to the same stuff

[john and helen]

fresh grass and corn

[sh3ph3rd]

Juliette de Bairacli Levy reckons it's the chlorophyll in green plants that gives yolks their richness of color. She's a great author to look up for natural treatments. 

Regarding ex-batt hens, I found that if you take an animal from a deprived environment and bung it onto the healthiest diet you can afford, their bodies go into a recoup mode wherein they either stop laying or lay inferior eggs for up to a year as they rebuild completely from the inside out. Then they amp up production again and you get eggs that match the best of your naturally raised hens, and they look worlds different from the pallid-pink crested, rough feathered birds they were.

Alternatively you can keep them on common pellets and keep up the consistent production combined with the sub-par health and lose them at the usual age to the usual problems. Cheaper, but no good if you wanted to include them in your own diet for your own health so you can avoid dying at the usual age from the usual problems, lol. Got too many health issues to remain on mainstream diets, my family does. Hit a brick wall, it's all organic and natural from here on. Expensive, but being normal got us to this point. Now it's costly to survive.