Chicken Farm
Beginner Java + Bedrock
Produces: Eggs every 5-10 minutes per chicken, feathers (0-2), and cooked chicken with the lava-roast design
Quick answer: Chickens lay an egg every 5-10 minutes in a loaded chunk. Stack them in a 1x1 pen over a hopper, throw the eggs to multiply the flock (1 in 8 hatches a chick), and let a lava blade at adult head height roast the adults into cooked chicken automatically.
How it works
- Every adult chicken in a loaded chunk lays one egg every 5-10 minutes - hopper floors under the pen collect them with zero effort.
- A thrown egg hatches a chick 1 time in 8: a dispenser on a clock turns your eggs into flock growth.
- Chickens take no fall damage (they glide), fit in a single block of space and never despawn - the classic farm crams dozens into one 1x1 hole over a hopper.
- A chicken killed by fire drops cooked chicken instead of raw chicken, so a lava kill system produces pre-cooked food.
- Feathers come free with every kill (0-2, +1 with Looting) - arrows for days.
Materials
- 2+ chickens lured with seeds (wheat, melon, pumpkin or beetroot all work)
- Building blocks, one hopper and one chest
- A dispenser + redstone clock for the auto-hatcher (optional)
- A lava bucket and a sign or trapdoor for the roaster (optional)
- Seeds for breeding - a wheat farm feeds this one
Build steps
- Pen the starters: lure two chickens with seeds into a 1x1 pit over a hopper feeding a chest - breeding them with seeds grows the flock.
- Let the eggs roll in: every adult drops an egg each 5-10 minutes; the hopper catches everything.
- Multiply: throw eggs at a wall (1 in 8 hatches) or load them into a dispenser on a clock so hatching runs itself.
- Cap the flock: on Java the entity cramming limit reduces a 1x1 pen to about 24 chickens (not an issue on Bedrock).
- Add a kill system (for example lava); the wiki explains how to filter out immature chicks so you do not kill chicks you still need.
- Collect cooked chicken, feathers and eggs from the hopper chain into chests.
- Eat the roast, craft arrows with the feathers and flint, and compost nothing - everything has a use.
- Expand in modules: another 1x1 pen next to the first doubles output for the price of a few blocks.
Rates
A 20-chicken pen averages an egg every 15-30 seconds, over a stack per hour, plus feathers and roast once the lava design culls adults. Output scales linearly with flock size.
Tips
- Any seed works for luring and breeding: wheat, beetroot, melon, pumpkin, torchflower or pitcher pod.
- The entity cramming limit (Java) leaves about 24 chickens per 1x1 pen; Bedrock does not have that problem.
- Each adult chicken lays about 8 eggs per hour on average, and loose eggs despawn after 5 minutes: collect them with hoppers.
- Jockey chickens (the ones zombies rode in on) never lay eggs - cull them first.
- Source: minecraft.wiki Tutorial:Egg farming and Chicken.