How long after being scared will it take before hens brood again?

[Echo Weaver]

We have some gen 1 chickens in our game, and we've been trying to breed them all game year. They have a pen far enough away from the main base that we don't pass by on a regular basis, but every few days (it's hard to know how many), we accidentally go to close while looking for resources, and they get spooked. We haven't been able to incubate any eggs to hatching. The pen currently has 2 eggs with 2 days left and 3 with 5 days left, with the warning that they need a broody hen. 

I don't recall it being nearly this difficult to breed them the first time. That was at another base, but if anything the pen was closer to the house -- close enough that the chickens (which have laser vision and can see through walls) would get spooked occasionally but not regularly. 

I'm at the point of wanting to cheat something, but I don't know if there's an admin command that would allow me to generate a couple of gen 2 chickens.

[Krougal]

It's always been a pain in the ass. I feel like they get stuck sometimes. They also go through food way faster than it seems like they should.

You need to target the animal (it'll be easier if you go into creative mode so they don't run) and type /entity cmd l[] setgen 2 or 3 or 10

"l[]" is for look, you could also do instead "e[type=chicken,range=3,alive=true]" which would do all chickens in 3 squares

[Echo Weaver]

3 hours ago, Krougal said:

It's always been a pain in the ass. I feel like they get stuck sometimes. They also go through food way faster than it seems like they should.

You need to target the animal (it'll be easier if you go into creative mode so they don't run) and type /entity cmd l[] setgen 2 or 3 or 10

"l[]" is for look, you could also do instead "e[type=chicken,range=3,alive=true]" which would do all chickens in 3 squares

Um, this may be a stupid question.... but do you need to feed the chickens while they brood? You only need to feed other lifestock to get them to breed, so we haven't been feeding them while we wait for the chicks. I'll feel a bit like a dork if that's the problem.

THANK YOU for the cheat. 

[Krougal]

They need to be fully fed to be broody. I am not 100% if that means you need to continue feeding them or not. Whereas the ewe or sow will stop eating once she is preggers.

It seems to be very inconsistent, although I have noticed that you need to make sure to get the chicks out of the pen with the trough, because they will eat up the food and it doesn't benefit their growth rate, so it is a waste.

The roosters seem to eat just to get up to weight and then they stop, but I am not positive on that either, and of course you can just keep them locked up nearby.

Edited August 10, 2025 by Krougal

[LadyWYT]

10 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

Um, this may be a stupid question.... but do you need to feed the chickens while they brood?

I always feed them a bit every now and then while they're brooding, as it seems to help them stay put on the nest or otherwise return to the nest faster if they've been scared off. It's difficult to get through the first couple of chicken generations, but once you do it gets easier to raise them without hassle.

I'll also note that you'll want to keep an eye on the chicken pen anyway to make sure there's not a fox or some other predator that's spooking them, as spooked chickens aren't always a player's fault. Bears and wolves are easy to notice, but foxes can be hard to spot, especially if there's a lot of tall grass or other plants around.

[Echo Weaver]

I didn't know about the chicks either. I guess that's why folks are always showing off their chicken coop designs featuring ways to separate the chicks from the adults.

[Krougal]

1 minute ago, Echo Weaver said:

I didn't know about the chicks either. I guess that's why folks are always showing off their chicken coop designs featuring ways to separate the chicks from the adults.

Yeah, I noticed that was a problem myself. I'd fill the troughs up and they would be empty the next day, and the hen wasn't getting enough to eat, so it was taking forever for the 2nd gen to hatch.

[Echo Weaver]

28 minutes ago, Krougal said:

Yeah, I noticed that was a problem myself. I'd fill the troughs up and they would be empty the next day, and the hen wasn't getting enough to eat, so it was taking forever for the 2nd gen to hatch.

So, drawing on my memory of other people's chicken sorting builds, can chicks walk under a slab while chickens can not? And can chicks jump up a block, or can they be trapped in a one-block wide trench?

So, yeah, my problem was that I wasn't feeding the hens. Derp. Though I guess since it doesn't match up with the other livestock, there was nothing in particular to lead me to believe I needed to feed them.

Edited August 10, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Krougal]

1 minute ago, Echo Weaver said:

So, drawing on my memory of other people's chicken sorting builds, can chicks walk under a slab while chickens can not? And can chicks jump up a block, or can they be trapped in a one-block wide trench?

Right. Like in this build. It also requires you to go and scare the chicks out of the yard so they fall down the hole. Making the back wall of the coop out of slabs also going to the basement and moving the player entrance to the side is an improvement I've made, but it works.

If you want floor holes for them to fall through, I believe chiseling works, but I've never done it.

I think they can still jump up 1 block.

 

[Echo Weaver]

That's a pretty cute build to look at as well as functional. I'll try it out.