How do you know??

[bruceha2000]

I've not heard of the lipstick trick .. food coloring yes. Probably cheaper too though I've not bothered.

I do believe my Welsummers are the ones with very dark speckling on them.

Yep.

 

[aart]

Are these only people who spend all day in the coop watching which hen is laying?

Yep, pretty much....then you have to remember which bird laid which egg

My first group of 6 pullets all had unique eggs,
so once I knew which was whose from 'catching them in the act' they were easy to track...
....and I tracked and recorded them for almost a year, with weights.
After that I didn't much bother....too many birds with similar eggs.

 

[Duckfarmer1]

I also use the lipstick trick when we deworm them. When we are done giving the medicine to a bird, we put some lipstick on her leg, and put her on a roost, keep going. By the time we’re done, we just keep checking legs. The last time it worked pretty well. We used to have two coops, but we just remodeled and made it into one giant one, so no way to separate them while giving meds without stress.

 

[NatJ]

You can put one hen in a dog crate or similar pen, and leave her there until she lays an egg--then make a note of who she was and what it was. Repeat as needed. (Put one in really early in the morning, and you may have your results that day.)

Or, pick a time when you only get a few eggs, then go look at each hen's vent to see who's laying. That's especially useful if you've got pullets just starting to lay. When you get the first egg of a particular color, go check all the pullets that it could have come from. (Works best when they start at different times, less well if they all start at once. Different breeds tend to mature at different rates, and even individuals of the same breed can mature at different rates.)

 

[elmo]

You can also do a lipstick test. At night you take a really bright shade of lipstick...something cheap. Put it on the chicken’s vent.

Just don't let your neighbors see you doing this. You might get some really strange reactions from them the next time you go to the neighborhood picnic.

 

[elmo]

I also use the lipstick trick when we deworm them.

I've heard of lipstick on a pig before, but never this!

 

[Finnie]

I've not heard of the lipstick trick .. food coloring yes. Probably cheaper too though I've not bothered.

I’ve tried food coloring before and it did not work at all. But I bet lipstick, being much thicker and stickier just might work.

 

[Flickster5]

Part of it is anticipating a new layer as well, at least for me. Comb becomes bright red, body fills out more, squatting for me...I'm watching her closely because I know she's going to be laying soon. Then yeah, differences in egg color, shape, size, "mottling," texture, location, etc. I have 3 white layers and even with them, the largest egg comes from the ancona, the pointier one that gets laid in a random nesting box away from the main ones but different every time is the Ideal236, and the medium sized white one in the main nesting boxes is the golden Campine.

This year is chaotic for me as I have about 15 pulleys slowly coming into lay as well as my older girls starting back up and many of them have differences after their break, so all in all I'm learning around 30 hens. Some I catch early and often as they lay early in the day when I can hear them and go out immediately. Others lay in the afternoon when I'm less likely to be at home. Took me almost 2 years to figure out it is my barred rock laying the jumbo egg, not the RIR lol eventually I'll get enough coops set up to break them into smaller groups because with my personality, I just HAVE to know

 

[Vicker]

I agree with just being able to tell which breed has laid or by the size if I have young ones. I can tell when a really old bird lays her sporadic egg. It's usually huge and misshapen.

 

[Ila88]

When I first see who is in the nest, I come back when I hear the egg song. After a bit I can identify who has laid what egg. Some of my eggs are green; others are various shades of brown. Each has a distinct shape and size. So once they are identified I then know who has laid. It helps that I only have 14 and of those at least 4 are "retired".