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 600 within the span of just a year. Once the population explosion gets going, the population will double every approximately 6 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 each day in eggs, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 1.136 when eggs are eaten. When chicks are slaughtered, a hen produces 0.6 nutrition per day, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 2.727. If the chicks are allowed to grow to adulthood before slaughter, the meat production per hen rises to 2.1 nutrition per day, and the chicks consume an additional 1.46 nutrition per day, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 1.253. Note, however, that neither of these nutrition efficiency calculations account for the consumption of the rooster(s) needed to fertilise the eggs - for a population of equal numbers of roosters and hens, the overall nutrition efficiency with baby slaughter would only be 1.339 if chicks are slaughtered, or 1.106 if adult chickens are slaughtered.

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