Feet turned yellow

Quote from: Casey76 on February 01, 2012, 15:31

Hens who have naturally yellow legs (a lot of hybrids, wyandottes etc) use the pigment from their legs to make the yolks - so as the laying season goes on, their legs become paler.

This is not true.

The yolk colour can only be influenced by the hen's intake of oxycarotenoids. These are present in maize, alfalfa and grass, all of which are often used in the formula to make up layers pellets. The leg colour, which starts with the genetic make up of the hen, e.g. Leghorns have predominantly yellow legs whilst Australorps have blue/grey legs, can become more coloured by oxycarotenoids but this colour does not get used up by the hen to colour the egg yolk.
To display a yellow skin, and therefore a yellow leg, requires that the hen carries two recessive genes, one which allows the skin to be coloured by carotenoids and another which allows it to be shown in the dermis layer of the skin. Any fading of the yellow is down to a change in the hen's diet.
An exception is the so called "corn fed" supermarket chickens that sometimes look as if they have been under a sunlamp. Leg, skin and yolk colour can also be influenced by other natural colouring agents such as marigold or paprika.