Help!

[vaira510]

My Japanese Bantam, who just recently started laying and caused my Silkie rooster to come out of the closet, stopped laying about ten days ago and then disappeared yesterday. I finally found her sitting on a nest behind the garbage can. She isn't in a very safe place. The rooster was very aggressive with her. Is a rooster immediately fertile? Are the eggs fertilized? Can I pick her and the eggs up and move them to a nesting box? Or, should I just leave her? Not sure what to do....

 

[bobbi-j]

I'm not sure what you mean by, "Is a rooster immediately fertile?" If he's a mature rooster, he's fertile. I don't remember how soon after mating begins that the eggs are fertile (there are many threads on this subject if you want to look them up). Are you sure he hasn't been mating her longer than you realize? If you want to move her, it's best to do so at night. They don't get as stressed this way. They seem to do better when they just wake up in a new spot. It's not 100% guaranteed, but it does help. You can always candle them to see if they're developing. Here are some very good pictures on what they should look like at different stages of development:https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/candling-pics-progression-through-incubation-of-chicken-eggs

 

[vaira510]

All of our chickens are pretty young, about 20 weeks now. Gia started laying about three weeks ago, surprising us all. As soon as she layed her first egg, my Silkie made it known that he was a rooster by crowing for the first time and then actively pursuing Gia. We didn't know before that what he was either way. My question was, is a rooster immediatly fertile once they begin acting like a rooster or is there a delay? We decided to move Gia and her eggs last night, into the nesting box in her coop. She had abandoned the eggs by this morning. I will crack a couple open tonight and see if they were fertile or not.