Green Yolked Eggs

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not eat them in the rain.
I will not eat them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!

I do not like
green eggs
and ham!

I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.

~ Dr. Suess

The beginning of February found us out of nesting materials for the chickens.  We recently had gone through a bunch of old paperwork and it was just sitting in boxes in the shop waiting to be recycled or used for the fire.  But we came up with the brilliant idea to utilize the paper and fill the nesting boxes at the same time.  Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.  We started shredding paper and filling the boxes.  I was thrilled we had come up with something so useful to do with both the paper and the nesting box material.  And with my father in laws different businesses he goes through a lot of paper, so we would be set for a long time.

I was in this blissfully happy world until about two weeks after we'd started with the office papers.  One morning Forest was starting breakfast and was shocked to find a green yolked egg.  It was fresh and smelled fine, but was green.  We thought it was weird but maybe it was just one bird having problems.  So he got another mug and cracked another egg.  This time, the yolk was nearly black.  He tried half a dozen eggs, from different birds and they all were strangely tinted.  Green, gray and black yolked eggs sat sprawled out on the kitchen counter and I'll be totally honest, I had completely lost my appetite.  Out of curiosity I poked one of the yolks with a fork, just to see if the whole thing was discolored, and was rather surprised when I discovered it was still that nice yellow color on the inside.

It was depressing to see that our beautiful eggs had been contaminated and as nothing else had changed with them it had to be the ink on the paper effecting them.  I posted on the backyardchickens forum since I couldn't seem to find any information about tinted yolks.  While grateful for the support of others it seemed that most people never had problems with paper in the nesting box.  So I was feeling a bit bummed.

We stopped eating the eggs because we knew they had been tinted with ink that was not food grade pigments.  We filled the nesting boxes with straw and then just waited.  I knew it would take a few weeks to work it out of their systems.  Two weeks after the problem started it was finally over.  The egg yolks had become yellow again and we were eating the eggs.  I am convinced it was the paper and ink (not a change in the grainery's mix) that changed the color.  Our chickens are bored during the long winter and to be honest are to crowded this year.  It doesn't surprise me that they would start eating the paper when first introduced out of curiosity.

I am so grateful to have our eggs back to normal and have beautiful golden colored yolks again.  What a weird, but educational, experience.