Chicken

Chickens can not be found in the wild; they must be bought from a merchant or join the colony in a self-taming event. Males of the species are referred to as Roosters and can be distinguished by their ruddy brown coloration, while females are referred to as Hens and are white. Babies of either gender are bright yellow and referred to as Chicks.

Hens will happily lay unfertilized eggs without a rooster, or they can be bred to start chicken farming.

Analysis

Chickens grow very quickly, taking only 12 days to mature, placing them among the fastest-growing animals. Combined with their incredibly fast reproduction rate of 1 offspring per day, a population of chickens can rapidly explode from a single rooster and hen, theoretically increasing to a population of 1200 adults within the span of just a year. Once the population explosion gets going, the population will double every approximately 5.7 days.

When slaughtered, a chicken yields 12 meat as a chick; 26 as a juvenile; or 42 as an adult. No leather is yielded. By slaughtering the chicks rather than eating the unhatched fertilised egg, more nutrition is gained (0.6 rather than 0.25).

An adult hen consumes 0.22 nutrition per day, and produces 0.25 nutrition of eggs each day, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 1.116 when unfertilised eggs are eaten.

When chicks are slaughtered, an always-fertilised hen produces 0.6 nutrition per day, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 2.679 for the hen alone, or 1.786 when accounting for the 2:1 hen:rooster ratio needed to achieve a good fertilisation rate.

As a chick grows into adulthood it will consume 1.45 nutrition in total, and will yield 1.5 more nutrition when slaughtered than it would as a baby. This means that the nutrition efficiency of a growing chick is 1.033. As the nutrition efficiency of growing chicks is so close to that of a population of a 2:1 hen:rooster population of adult chickens, it is probably preferable to allow them to grow to adulthood in order to save on slaughtering and butchering labour.

Training

Chickens lack the intelligence for training.

This animal can be trained as follows:

Guard:
Attack:
Rescue:
Haul:

*As of version 1.1.2610, all animals can be tamed. The percentage of likelihood of success depends on factors such as the Animals Wildness Percentage, Pawn Handling Skill, and others. More information can be found on the animals page.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	9
Skull	9
Brain	4
Nose	4
Neck	9
Jaw	7
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	4
Ear (left, right)	4
Body	14
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	5
Lung^[2] (left, right)	5
Liver^[2]	7
Heart^[2]	5
Spine^[2]	9
Stomach^[2]	7
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	11
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	7

↑ Located inside of Head.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

Version history

0.12.906 - Added
Alpha 17 - Prior to Alpha 17, chickens were one of the fastest reproducing animals in the game. However, they were nerfed in Alpha 17 in both body size and breeding rate, making them significantly less efficient than they used to be. In fact, after Alpha 17, it was much more nutrition-efficient to farm snowhares for meat and cows for milk.
1.3:
- Egg interval: 2 -> 1
- Base hunger rate: 0.35 -> 0.14
- Maturity age: 0.3 -> 0.2