Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <eggs>
Title: Why are Italian eggs so yellow?
Question: I've noticed when I've bought Italian eggs from delis here in Europe that the yolks are very yellow - almost orange. Why is this? Assume it's the hen's diet. What are they feeding chickens there?

Answers:
sents: text: The yellow color comes (primarily) from vitamin A in the eggs.
text: The eggs are high in vitamin A when the chickens are fed a natural diet of seeds, vegitation and insects.
text: Most of the eggs that you buy in the states are factory farmed and pale because the chickens are fed a special protein mix that has a lot of corn.
text: This makes them lay faster and more economicly, but the mix is somewhat nutrient poor, so the eggs are less colorful.
text: This also used to happen in cows: the milk was yellow in the summer when they ate grass, but white in the winter when they ate hay and grains.
text: If you find good yellow eggs, that is a good sign that the chickens led a good life on a natural diet.
text: Of course, the feed could just be doped with vitamin A to make the eggs look more yellow.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/624/Adam Shiemke
score: 26
sents: text: Alternatively, the chickens may have been fed maize (corn); they market a specific maize-fed brand over here and the yokes of those eggs are a very deep yellow as well.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/744/Boetsj
score: 10
sents: text: Farmers can control the colour of the yolk by controlling the chickens' diet.
text: Some farms add colour to the chicken feed to produce different coloured yolks.
text: See the yolk section of the Wikipedia article on eggs .
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/1138/Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
score: 10
sents: text: Don't know about Italian chickens in particular, but I know that when my mom's neighbors in Hungary feed their chickens the leftovers from making paprika, the resulting eggs have very dark yolks indeed.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/2569/Marti
score: 7
sents: text: One of the most unique uses for oleoresin paprika is that it is added to poultry feed in order to give the yolks in chicken eggs a darker yellow appearance than is natural for them.
text: Due to the fact that is is derived from natural food sources as a food colorant, in the United States, it is exempt from Food and Drug Administration (FDA) certification.
text: It receives equally lenient treatment under European law, where it is grouped with similar colorants of capsanthin and capsorubin.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/20222/David Adams
score: 3
sents: text: Quoting from the KCRW Good-food podcast, episode Italy comes to LA, cauliflower, and Kachka of 6 Jan 2018: the hens are feed marigold petals.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/66086/user69841
score: 0
sents: text: This was also true in Spain.
text: I do know that our own backyard hens have this deep orangish color yoke because they have access to the outdoors, greens, and bugs, I think only factory farmed eggs are pale yellow
text: and I wonder if the EU has regulations about factory farming chickens.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/78578/Mel
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
This can be a good sign that the chickens were fed a more natural diet and were not factory raised, but a deeper yellow or orange colour can be achieved with the addition of marigold petals, maize (corn), colourings or the leftovers of paprika production.
The orange color of a yolk comes from the chicken's diet. Either they have been fed corn, or they have a varied diet with lots of food sources.