Unlike most passive mobs in Minecraft, the chicken is—by far—considered the most farmable animal mob in the game as it does not require any food to enhance its growth and to reproduce. And it also do3es not matter where a player keeps their chickens as everything happens automatically. On a side note, building egg and chicken farms are great for harvesting cooked chickens as they are just as good as other cooked meats when restoring health and hunger points of players.
Minecraft Guide To Egg Farming
As most new players do not know, egg farming is the sole process of collecting mass-produced chicken eggs from chickens in Minecraft. Built for harvesting eggs, a chicken farm can not only be created to obtain eggs but also to harvest other raw end products that are dropped by chickens such as feathers and raw or cooked chicken meat as egg farms can be constructed along with the addition of a system for automatically dispensing eggs and killing chickens.
1. Building The Chicken Pen
Before anything else, you need to build a chicken pen to hold your chickens in. A one-block high-fenced area should be enough, but ensure to add a fence gate to easily access the pen from the inside and out. Adding a fence gate will also help prevent the chickens from escaping easily so long as the fence gate is kept closed before and after entering the chicken pen.
2. Catching Chickens For The Pen
The primary and most common way to capture chickens is to bait them to follow you using their favorite food item. In this case, chickens love eating seeds, so holding any seeds, whether they are wheat seeds or melon seeds, will allow all the nearby chickens to follow the player willingly. And as the chickens will follow whoever is holding the seeds, this will make it easier to guide them right into the fenced chicken pen.
Alternatively, if the player uses leads to leash the chickens, this will prevent them from wandering off on their own. Although convenient, using leads can also be costly as each chicken would need a separate lead to drag them along, requiring the player to have multiple slimeballs and strings to craft. But with care, using leads on chickens will allow the player to lead them across the water, making this great when traveling long distances.
Another way to place chickens inside the chicken pen is to collect eggs and throw them into the pen. There is, however, only 1 out of 8 chance to spawn a chick for each egg thrown, so collecting at least a set of eggs first before doing this method works best. The chicks will also take some time to grow into chickens, but once you have at least one fully grown chicken, it will naturally start producing eggs on its own, as each adult chicken will lay eggs at an average of 8 eggs per hour. However, having two or more adult chickens will allow you to breed them using seeds of any kind, so breeding is also another option on how to multiply the chickens in your pen.
3. Choosing Your Farm Design
Choosing how to design your egg farm is the most important part of the entire process, as this part dictates how efficient your farm will be and whether or not you will build a manual or automatic egg farm in Minecraft. Below is a short guide on some of the most common egg farm designs in the game most players use for their base.
Basic Manual Egg Farm Design
The easiest and most traditional way to farm for chicken eggs is simply having the player run around and automatically collect the dropped chicken eggs. Alternatively, the player can also follow an automatic egg farm design to channel all the eggs to a single point to collect them easily. Of course, this includes chicken eggs and chicken drops such as meat, feathers, and even experience orbs.
Minimal Automatic Egg Farm Design
This egg farm consists of only eight blocks, a hopper, and a chest. The entire farm design relies on the sole empty block area that holds the chickens in. However, due to the introduction of the MaxEntityCramming game rule on Minecraft Java Edition 1.11 update, a single block can only hold up to 24 entities—in this case, chickens. Once you have created the egg farm, place a chicken inside directly on top of the hopper, and you can close the entrance altogether or leave it open if you plan on adding more chickens later on. Adding more chickens will hasten egg production as chickens drop eggs regularly, although you can only place a maximum of 24 chickens on top of a single hopper. This design can be extended by simply adding and connecting more hoppers until it eventually points to a single location: the chest. However, if you plan to extend this farm design, place slabs on the second block on top of the chickens to prevent other mobs from spawning in them.
Hopper Automatic Egg Farm Design
This relatively simple egg farm design mainly focuses on containing the chickens in water. The process is simple enough as the chickens will grow, reproduce, and lay their eggs in the water, allowing all the dropped items to flow towards the hopper. The entire automatic farm will include three droppers, one dispenser, three hoppers, one small or large chest, a couple of switches, two Redstone torches, two Redstone repeaters, and six Redstone dust. Then the entire farm will be surrounded by an 11×11 tall fence or wall on the surface with either doors or fence gates in the middle. And since the entire chicken area will be contained using water, this resists any problems you will probably have regarding chickens accidentally getting out or over the fences.
Joghurts Egg Farm Design
This is another relatively quick and easy egg farm design. Dig an 11×11 block square hole one block deep, then dig another layer in a circular shape. Once that is done, dig a one-block hole in the center to allow the water and eggs to pass through. Connect the drain hole below to your system and place water blocks in all four corners. You will need to build an isle which will be used to prevent the chickens from getting flushed along with the flow of water, and it will also serve as their ground to lay their eggs on.
Trench Egg Farm Design
This farm design is sometimes called the compact pit egg farm with a hopper. It is one of the most straightforward and compact egg farm designs as it only takes about 14 seconds to build and will need eight logs of any kind, ten iron ingots, two dirt blocks, and a ladder. Although it seems pretty different, it is the same as the minimal automatic egg farm design but placed in a pit instead. Start by digging a three-block deep, four blocks long, and one wide hole. Then place a double chest on one side at the bottom and two hoppers connected to the chest on the other end. The ladder can then be placed over the chests to allow access anytime. Next, place two blocks over the hopper next to the chest to keep the chickens in place. And finally, allow chickens to hatch over the exposed hopper and collect the remaining eggs from the chest.
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