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Why are egg yolks different colours? Comments from Macdonald Campus Farm technician Louis-Philippe Dessureault

Published: 21 January 2025

National Post published an article that cracks open the story of egg yolk colours, from nutrition to taste, and how they came about in the first place.

Unlike shell colour, which depends on the breed of chicken, the hue of an egg yolk is determined by the hen’s diet.

“(Depending on) the diet makeup, you can have a very wide variety of colour ranges,” egg-splained Louis-Philippe Dessureault, an animal science technician at Ď㽶ĘÓƵ’s Macdonald Campus Farm, which provides eggs to dining services as part of the McGill Feeding McGill initiative. A diet rich in grains, such as barley, oats and wheat, yields paler egg yolks. At the other end of the spectrum, foraging birds feeding on acorns could lay brown-yolked eggs.

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