Who laid this egg?

First egg from one of two pullets, laid in the dustbath! It's the pale brown one on the left, 40g. The other one is Lily leghorn's 9th, now up to 45g.

It was either Violet, the Bluebelle, or Iris, the black. I suspect Violet who is more developed, but both are crouching etc. I've never had these colours before so don't know what to expect from each.
This is Violet

and this is Iris

The breeder said one of them should be a dark egger but I can't remember which.
Thanks folks!



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Well done, Marigold, you must be such a proud Mum.

So that's what the bendy bucket is for
It's a nice shiny egg! I don't know but I'm betting it was Violet.
They both look great. Having seen one of mine develop a comb very slowly and not knowing what size Iris's comb is 'supposed' to end up then ??? Do they have different colour ear lobes at all?

I assumed Violet would be first as she's been so obviously more mature than Iris for the past two weeks, but what little info I can find on egg colour for Bluebells usually says 'brown with a plum blush' although one source said 'pinky-brown.'
On the other hand, Iris is, I suppose, a Rhode Rock, although all the pics of Rocks show them with brown feathers round their necks, much the same as Violet's. Could she be a Black Star? Iris is totally black all over, right down to her feet, and with a beautiful green sheen on her feathers, like a starling. I think maybe she will lay a darker brown egg, but again, can't find any useful pics.
On balance I think it must be Violet.
So any info anyone has on Bluebells, Black Stars or Rhode Rocks would be most interesting!

Our Bluebell laid white eggs Marigold, usually soft shelled which we put down to lack of sunlight as she spent most of her time in the coop. The two Black Stars we had laid dark brown eggs as you would get from Marans and the brown surface coating would wash off easily. Our Blackrocks (they were the genuine strain) laid very light brown eggs I think- but it's going back a long time indeed.

Over my hen keeping years, my granddaughter had two Bluebells, both of them pretty, sweet, and utter rubbish layers, also both died for seemingly no reason, and unexpectedly at a young age - (but you do not wish to know that!). They were one of the reasons along with the constant dropping off perches of other hybrid girls, that I decided to go for purebreds, a decision I have never regretted.
I have just lost one of my two remaining utility Leghorns, but she must have been 5/6, and I thought I was going to lose her back in the Summer, but she recovered, rallied, and kept on laying. I shall miss her large white eggs - she was the best layer.
I have purebred Pekins who are incredibly old and look it, but still laying and certainly enjoying life. My Indi - Cornish game, very old, and my ramaining Ancona Dot, is getting on but still the mouthiest hen I have ever had, and still laying her slightly off-white eggs.
My 3 RIRs I hatched last year, are beautiful and really nice hens, not too large, and very good layers of light brown eggs.

Another pinkish egg today, again in the dust bath, but getting bigger - up 5 grams on yesterday, now 45.5g. It has to be Violet - I'd been out in the garden, keeping watch every 10-15 mins, but she slipped in and laid it when I wasn't looking! Thank you for the info, Chris, it does sound as if Violet's eggs will be pale pinkish cream, so maybe Iris, the black hen, will lay darker brown ones. And thank you, Val, for the info I didn't want - even if it does turn out that she isn't very long-lived, she will have made up for it in beauty and entertainment value.
Then I shall be interested in what I get from Daisy, the Buff Barred. Any ideas on that one?

Pullets are full of surprises!
This morning I put a dustbin lid over the dustbath and watched. Violet, the bluebell, jumped up on it, clearly worried, and started to squat, as if about to lay an egg. So I popped her into a nestbox, added Lily Leghorn for company as Lily was due to lay as well, and shut the pophole.
Half an hour later I opened up. No eggs. So I watched.
Daisy, the most underdeveloped one, who doesn't even crouch yet, went in to a nestbox and spent a long time bumbling about in there. After a few minutes, Violet went into the coop and came out again two minutes later. I found a 45g egg on the floor. At least that was better than in the dustbath.
When I went back later, Lily had laid, and there was also a big surprise in the nestbox - a whopping 65gram egg, which I have to suppose was laid by Iris, the black pullet. Not bad for a first attempt! Not very brown, though - a bit darker pink than Violet's.




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They're doing it deliberately, to keep you guessing!! Chickens, you see, never want you to know who is laying what, in case you decide to give non layers the chop! So, they decide among themselves to do this elaborate muddying of the waters, as to who's laying what!

All four are laying every day now, and today the three pinky-fawn-egg-laying hybrids each produced an indistinguishable egg. 60.3g, 60.4g, and 68.5g.
Plus the white egg from the leghorn. I collected all four and took them in - as I had done the day before.
At teatime I went to put the flower pot in the nestbox that one of them has been sleeping in overnight, and found a FIFTH egg, 48.55g. So somebody laid over 100g-worth of breakfast today. I have no idea which one. Yes there are very slight differences in the shade of the eggs, and as they develop there are size differences, though these are evening out as they get better at it, but as I don't know which pullet laid which one, I'm none the wiser. My last lot of hens produced a blue egg, a green egg, a brown egg, a very slightly chalk colour egg, and a pure white egg, as I would have expected from a CLB, a Chalkhill Blue, a Blacktail, a brown leghorn hybrid and a purebred leghorn. This lot look just as distinctively different in appearance, but seem to have ganged up together, to keep me guessing, as you say, LadyA!

I am as in the dark with mine (except Bonnie, shade of pinky brown.) A suprise today was when I was taking to our neighbour at the back, because I removed the wind break at the back today... We were talking and Linden jumps on top of Lulu and succeeded in mateing. I didn't think he could do that due to the size difference.
Keeping quiet about the potentially furtile eggs as I don't want to put anyone off.
It was funny because my neighbour had just said 'Linden looks very pleased with himself!' Yes, and now we know why!
It is a bit of a problem not knowing who laid the egg. At the moment there are enough eggs to be sure that all are laying fairly constantly but it would be good to know which one stopped, if it was just one, when the numbers drop.

Yes, exactly - that's my main reason for wanting to know who was laying which type of egg. I've always been able to do this before, given a variety of breeds in the first place.
Good life for Linden anyway. Do your neighbours realise you have a boy in there? If so, are they ignorant of the facts of life? I had two visiting children last week, age 9, new to hens. They looked in wonder at the eggs they collected and then one asked 'When will they hatch?"

One way you could try to find out who's laying what, is to dab a little paste food colouring on the hen's vent. Different colour for each hen. The colour tends to come off on the egg as it's being laid.

Yes, that's a good way.
The only way I can think of to make it observable on a day to day basis, as simply as possibly though not exactly simple really, would be weighing scale sensors as nest box floor and logging the data.
It would be very interesting and also log the hens weights, I think closely enough to identify the layer and the egg deposited (only way to know is to experiment) -
But, of course, way over the top!

I made some progress today. I noticed that Daisy and Violet were both in the nest boxes, so I had a peep and saw that they were using separate boxes. When they emerged I swooped on the eggs and wrote D on one and V on the other. (Of course, knowing this lot, they might have swapped over boxes before actually laying.) Then later on, when the third egg was laid I knew it must be Iris. This was a small egg, only 42 grams, when hers are normally well over 60g, which confirmed me in the belief that Iris was the bird who laid two eggs yesterday, one of which was yet another double yolker, so really she laid three yesterday! I had expected she would have a day off, but she's a little worker - probably not long for this world. Looks as if she was averaging things out today.
Looking at the three pinky-fawn eggs with initials on, I can see differences in colour and texture, though it will be tricky to get to the stage where I can reliably attribute a single egg without the others for comparison. But at least it's a start!

You'll have to crack them carefully, rinse them out and keep them as your reference!

What a very good idea - thank you Margaid - I'll definitely do that.