This farm will be surrounded on the surface by an 11×11 fence or wall, with doors or gates at or near the middle of a side. The hatcher is controlled through a despawn timer, which prevents the system from spawning chickens ad infinitum (or at least until the server crashes). This chest feeds an automatic hatcher, which can refill the main floor after a harvest. The hopper egg farm is a relatively simple contraption, which does not require access to nether quartz: On the main floor, chickens are contained by water while they grow and lay eggs, which also wash the eggs into a hopper from there the eggs go back into the system's supply chest. (Hoppers can fetch dropped eggs through a slab.) As using many hoppers becomes too expensive, water flow is used instead of the initial collection in the following version. At a certain point, the system becomes prone to mob spawns, and slabs can be laid over hoppers to deter mobs spawning. This system may be extended with a larger living area with all hoppers eventually pointing to one that goes to a chest. Bait a chicken in or throw some eggs at the interior walls to start the system. The opening at the top can either be used as a one-way entrance or simply sealed. Alternatively, you can place a single vines block in the space that the chickens occupy, and they will not suffer from entity cramming damage. Check your servers settings on cramming before settling on this farm solution (this is not a problem on bedrock edition). Since version Java Edition 1.11's introduction of the ma圎ntit圜ramming gamerule, the number has reduced to 24. This is a minimal egg farm consisting of 8 blocks, a hopper and chest: it's incredibly efficient in versions prior to 1.11, when it could house hundreds of chickens in an 1x1 area. Most such will do the same for chicken meat, feathers, and even experience orbs as well. You can farm chicken eggs the traditional way, where you have to run around and collect chicken eggs all the time.Īlternatively, you can follow one of the tutorials below, to create a farm that channels eggs to a single point. This also assumes you are collecting all the eggs - remember, loose items like eggs despawn after 5 minutes. Nights skipped in a bed do not count toward this time, and the chunk(s) containing the chicken must remain loaded (that is, near a player or in the spawn chunks). When hatching large numbers of chickens, a good rule of thumb is that the chickens will need well over a real-time hour to replace the eggs used to hatch them. Each adult chicken will lay an average of 8 eggs per hour. They will take some time to grow to adulthood but once you have at least one adult chicken it will start producing eggs and with two or more adults you can breed them with any seeds. There is only a 1 in 8 chance of spawning a chicken when you throw an Egg, so you should try to collect at least one stack. With care, chickens can even be led across water, as they will follow your boat.Īnother option is to collect eggs and throw the eggs into your closed pen. You will need a separate lead for each chicken. Alternatively, if you already have slimeballs and string, you can use leads to drag them along this will mostly keep them from wandering away.
The usual way to capture chickens is to hold seeds of any kind, which will make any chickens nearby follow you across the landscape and right into the pen. This will help prevent escapees - if one of the gates is always closed, the chickens' pathfinding will never see an escape route to the outside.
Single-height wooden fences (or a small cave) will suffice, but either way it's best to add an "entry lock": a fenced space with gates leading both to the pen and to outside. In general, you'll want to first build a pen to hold them.