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.

Summary

Chickens are pen animals. Once tamed, pen animals cannot and do not need to be trained any further. But if left outside of a pen or caravan hitching spot, pen animals will eventually roam outside your colony. Making a caravan is not required to tie animals to a caravan hitching spot.

A female chicken produces 1 egg every 1 day. Chickens can lay both unfertilized and fertilized eggs, depending on if it has mated with a rooster.

Analysis

Chickens are the best animal for egg production, and one of the best animals for meat production.

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.

Chickens are nearly identical to ducks. Ducks provide the same yield in both meat and eggs. But ducks consume 20% more nutrition, so they are inferior as livestock.

Eggs

An adult hen consumes 0.22 nutrition per day, and produces 0.25 nutrition of eggs each day. This results in a nutrition efficiency of 111.6% when unfertilized eggs are eaten. Overeating, and the existence of roosters, will lower nutrition efficiency in practice.

Note that slaughtering chicks gives more nutrition than eating unhatched eggs (0.6 from meat rather than 0.25 from 1 egg). Note that a rooster has to fertilize each hen, that hens have to be slaughtered, and that a butcher's yields are multiplied by Butchery Efficiency. So if you don't have a skilled cook, eggs may be better for nutrition. Also, eggs are vegetarian.

Meat

When slaughtered, a chicken yields 12 meat as a chick; 26 as a juvenile; or 42 as an adult. No leather is yielded.

When chicks are slaughtered, an always-fertilized hen produces 0.6 nutrition per day, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 267.9% for the hen alone, or 178.6% when accounting for the 2:1 hen:rooster ratio needed to achieve a good fertilization 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. Due to the effects of overeating, letting chickens grow up is a slight malus to meat yield. Despite being slightly worse, you may prefer to let chicks grow up, as slaughtering adult chickens takes less work.

Chickens are the best pen animal for nutritional efficiency. The main competitors are the ibex and tortoise. Ibex are less efficient, but take far less slaughtering work. Tortoises aren't pen animals, meaning they must be re-tamed over time, but are even better for nutrition.

Kill-focused

Chicken's rapid reproduction makes them good fodder for the Kill-focused persona trait. This persona trait grants +20% psyfocus whenever its wielder kills any pawn, even when slaughtering chickens or chicks. A coop can allow rapid use of psycasts, such as word of inspiration, which would otherwise be limited by psyfocus.

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.

Gallery

Hen facing east
Hen facing north
Hen facing south
Chicken decaying

Rooster facing east
Rooster facing north
Rooster facing south

Chick facing east
Chick facing north
Chick facing south

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