The Marys got a bad rap!

I was so smart. I had it all figured out. The Marys, or one or two of them at least, were the brown egg breakers in the big pen! I had caught them red (or yellow-yolked) beaked one day - two of them, munching away on an egg in the nest. And there was, usually, a light blue or green egg in where the residue (proof of the crime) was. Thus my theory: the Marys didn't want to lay their eggs with the brown ones, so they just ate them, or broke them and threw them out, and laid their pretty blue ones in their place.Made sense to me. That's why, if you have been following this silly chicken soap opera, I moved all 5 Marys into the new pen (Junior's pen), away from the bulk of the brown egg layers, and where there are lots of nice new nests.

Problem solved.

And today..... in the big pen.... where there are no Marys... pecked open biggest brown egg in the nest! Right under blacktail - one of our little brown egg layers. That would be yolk on MY face. I had to go over and, yes, apologize to the Marys for blaming them and being so irritable at them. But now, I still have a mystery.......

Was it blacktail? She was sitting the wrong way in the box (is there a right way?). Or was it someone else? How do I find out, short of isolating the hens one-by-one?

18 eggs today
1 broken
1 from Dilly's pen
4 from Jr's pen (3 blue from the Mary's and WT's brown)
12 from the big pen

How many hens in the big pen?
2 angels
3 blues
5 reds
blacktail
whitetail
blacky
goldy
5 new ones (Vera's - 2 may be Roos)
Total: 19

I sure have a lot of non-producers! We are going to go get them some fruit tomorrow - papaya - that should cheer them up!