If you have the room, I highly recommend them as pets. They're quite cool and very low maintenance, and they make the best eggs you've ever had.
Can definitely see it in the yolk color, no doubt about that.
What is the difference you taste?
Now, if you ever butcher your own, THAT is a huge difference in taste. Night and day, similar to garden-grown sweet corn vs what you get at the market.
What are you feeding them? If you're feeding them commercial feed, I wouldn't expect much difference in taste.
Also, what do you do with the eggs you don't eat?
We've had some problems with snakes, but we're in the country outside Austin, TX and snakes are just a way of life out here. We even had to remove a rattlesnake from inside the house a few weeks back. Skunks are a big problem this year -- lots of them out and about.
We give and sell fresh eggs to everyone we know. I routinely take them into work and sell them for $5 a dozen. We've had to explain the whole not washing or refrigerating them to most people but after they've had fresh eggs they always want more.
As such their yolks will tend to be yellow instead of orange or nearly red, as true pastured chicken eggs yolks will be.
re: snakes - not so far, and the other comment about them keeping potentially dangerous insects (ticks) in check is right on. Hawks and foxes are more the concern as predators around here, we've lost a few to foxes in the last two years.
Not that I mind black snakes, but I don't like them stealing eggs.
Relocating them off on a distant part of my 40 acres doesn't keep them from coming back.
But some people prefer fertilized eggs.
Some people prefer embryos in their eggs, too.
I still need to try this 'lutefisk' thing though.
Edit: I meant 'surströmming'.