How to tell if my hen is still laying?

[ChickenTenderz]

I have a Rhode Island Red hen - Becky. She will be 2 years old this spring, last year she started laying soft shelled eggs from the perch at night and then brittle shelled eggs after I started supplementing her with Calcium tablets. I stopped because it wasn't helping that much, she dutifully took her pill every day and then laid an egg that just got crushed in the nesting box by the other girls. The mess in the nesting box caused the other girls' bellies to break out in rashes too. I resigned myself to having a hen that just can't lay normal eggs. She's just finishing up her first molt, is it possible she might be able to lay "good" eggs ?
She has a great personality, she is very talkative and comes running to meet me as I approach the coop. We are getting 3 more chicks this spring to replace the loss of one of our pullets to a predator over Christmas break. But it will put us near max capacity in the coop and run. My husband is suggesting we confirm Becky is or isn't laying and she may need to be culled if she isn't producing. I could separate her from the others but each time I've had to separate some of my hens before they were too upset about it to lay. How can I tell if she's laying?

 

[nuthatched]

A butt check. Check her vent, if it's wide and pink she's laying, if it's small and yellow, she not. She also might not be laying because it's winter.

 

[ChickenTenderz]

I have 4 RIR (all will be 2 yrs this spring and finishing up their first molt) and 3 Black Australorps (will be 1 yr this spring)
For the last week or so I have been collecting 2 eggs one day and 4 the next. Before Becky started having issues I was consistently getting 4 eggs everyday, of course that was before the BA's started laying. I knew they would slow down in winter and they all did. (I even had to buy eggs for a while) But they seem to be picking back up in production.

I have checked her vent before and it looked similar to the other 3 RIR's

 

[K0k0shka]

Production breeds like RIRs are known for having a lot of reproductive/laying issues, maybe that's what's going on. There's another, more reliable "butt check" if you want to confirm if she's laying - by feeling for her pelvic bones and measuring how far apart they are spaced. If you feel around her vent, there will be two pointy things on either side of it - that's the pelvic bones. Depending on how big her eggs are and how thick your fingers are, you should be able to fit the widths of 2-3 fingers between the pelvic bones. 2 fingers or less means the bones are too close together, so she isn't laying. If you can fit more than 2 fingers (3 fingers for me because I have small hands), then she's still laying. The bones will stay far apart during the active season, and move closer together during the inactive season.