Assessing egg yolk colors

One of the best ways to determine how much forage your chickens are getting from pasture is to crack the eggs open and look at the color of the yolk.  I've found that hard-boiling the eggs first makes comparisons simpler (and then you can scoop out the egg whites and yolks to turn into egg salad.)

Before running my egg test, I hypothesized that our cochin would have the palest eggs because she always looks a bit befuddled on pasture, showing up last when I dump weeds on the compost pile.  Sure enough, her egg yolks were on the pale side (although still pretty bright by store-bought standards.)  However, I was surprised to see that the old Golden Comet who has recently started laying again after taking a long winter vacation has eggs nearly as pale.  (Actually, I'm not 100% sure of my ability to distinguish between these two hens' eggs since they're both small and pale-shelled.)

On the other hand, the young Golden Comet and the other old Golden Comet have brilliantly yellow-orange egg yolks.  I guess I should be focusing my incubation efforts on propagating the genetics of these two since they've proven themselves to be prime foragers.

As a side note, I'm sure you're all aware that the brighter the colors of your egg yolks, the healthier the eggs are for you.  But did you know that egg yolk color stays bright until your hens have been off pasture for about 50 days, then comes back after only seven days on spring pasture?