Rooster Egg-laying?!?!

[silkiechicken]

LOL.

It's normal. The roo is just showing the girls what a good place it is to lay an egg. It's not so bad till you catch the rooster doing the "come here to deposit eggs" ritual 20 feet into the dreaded black berry bushes, to later find two dozen eggs you can't quite reach with a shovel.

 

[spatcher]

* Respect that people may have a different political, religious, philosophical and cultural background than you

 

[horsechick]

Thank goodness I saw this, we have one that will do that too. LOL!
Especially if I change the litter in their box and the girls are not real sure about going in it. He will get in and make happy noises and pretty soon the girls want in too, and sometimes there are 2-3 in there together,

 

[patienceprudencecharity]

In this case it does sound like the rooster was just checkin' out the nesting accomodations. He might be curious, or might be trying to arrange it perfectly, like hens do before they begin to lay. Reminds me of courtly behavior in presenting a delicious bug to the hens, giving them the shadiest spot, etc.

But it is kind of interesting that lots of animals actually exhibit behavior that is more typical of the other gender-- there really are not hard and fast rules, despite what we are given to believe. For example, if there is no rooster among a group of chickens, a hen will usually take on the leadership role. My dominant hen is extremely protective of the other two birds, even spreading her wings over them to protect them when they are frightened. (It's pretty touching!)

Some male birds all but change gender in the presence of a more dominant male, even growing the feathering of the other gender. It's actually a really interesting phenomenon in the animal world.
The other thing to realize is that it is not unusual for animals of all sorts to have physical aspects of both genders. Even among humans, hormonal changes during pregnancy result fairly often in people who have the external sexual organs of one gender but the brain structure of the other gender.

 

[Ellie_NY_chick]

I've had my young roos mount each other, much to the bewilderment of the little guy on the bottom. And I have a Sumantra hen that crowed once. I've made no assumptions about any of them. As long as they grow up happy, I'm happy.

 

[Harley's girl]

This is too funny!

Just this morning when I was letting the girls out I could not find one of my roosters.......you guessed it! HE was in the nesting box setting on 2 eggs!!!!

I asked him what he thought he was doing. Then he promptly got up and left.

Guess he wants to hear the pitter patter sound of chickie feet!!!!

 

[wegotchickens]

I never saw our roo in a nest, but he would stand in the doorway and 'encourage' the girls. He acted so proud when they laid their eggs!

 

[the1much]

i know the MINUTE my hens have an egg,,,,,,my big bad roo starts SCREAMING like he just had the egg!! hahaha
he goes in EVERY morning, and makes 4 nests,,,and after his "hollerin" he then goes over and sits on them,,,,i RUN out and gather the eggs before any of my friends see my macho bird "playing dress up"..hehe