Talk:Chicken Coop

Seeing as the article is rightly requesting a double check on the info. I've taken to cleaning it up a good bit. Before I just go edit crazy in there though, I'd like to get some feedback. I'm certainly no expert. In fact I'm kinda cutting my teeth here. What brought me here was a desire to create that Fodder page, but that's still a bit above my head, and food for another discussion. :)

Anyway, here are the proposed changes (In Boldface):

If you want to breed Hens and Cocks you will need to build a Chicken Coop. Each hen will take around 1 real life day to lay an egg. Be sure to leave space below the hen or it will not produce an egg. Chicken Coops offer an 8x8 grid. Hens will lay eggs without a cock in the Chicken Coop, but they will not be fertilized. Fertilized eggs have a white pie fraction overlain on them indicating when they will hatch into chicks. Fertilized eggs can still be turned into food. Note that Hens, which take up 4 spaces (2x2), must have at least one space directly below them to lay eggs. Likewise fertilized eggs must be under the hens for them to hatch. The growth timer will stop after some time if there is no chicken above the egg. Chicks must have a 2x2 tile space, a total of 4 tiles, to mature into chickens and they will jostle themselves around to make this room when they are ready, however, if it is not available their timer will pause and they will not mature until there is enough room.

Also note that, occasionally sterile eggs will still be produced even if all the above requirements are met.
Coop+Cock always produces fertilized eggs. Fertilized eggs just have a small delay before they show there fertilized state. (due to inappropriate rounding I presume) --.MvGulik. 16:37, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

The following needs to be a separate section:

Quality

A Chicken Coop has no quality and thus has no effect on the eggs and chicks produced.

Essentially, chicken quality is directly based on water and seed quality. Higher quality Fodder, known as Swill in game,(Create page Fodder & links, like to Trough, etc.) from higher quality foods will allow your chicks to grow into higher quality hens and cocks; Higher quality cocks and hens will produce higher quality eggs, which will hatch into higher quality chicks than the previous generation, and thus the cycle repeats.

When a new egg is laid, it's quality is based on the average of its parents quality +/-5. When it hatches, the chick is initially of the same quality as its egg was. As the young chick grows, it will feed occasionally. If during any of these feedings fodder and water quality's average is lower than that of the chick, then the chick's quality will drop by some increment. (Don't know the formula here, but it drops in fractions of levels.) Chicks never grow in quality and mature chickens never change theirs.

Caring for your Chickens

Chickens require feeding and watering and Chicken Coops have space for this inside of them. To fill them, have fodder material (listed below) in your inventory, then pick it up with a left-click and right-click on the coop. This will fill the fodder bar a bit. You will not be able to recover any seeds or plants used in this manner. Fodder and water each fill up their own meter inside the coop. The amount diminished is proportionate to the amount of chickens contained therein.

Plants that could be used as fodder:

(This list is not complete.) (<-Propose putting this here until it is.)

The list stays the same for now and everything down to the Tips section

Tips

There is a trick to filling a Chicken Coop much more quickly than normal; Click to pick up a unit of food, then with it floating on your cursor, hold down the shift key and right click the trough. As long as you keep the shift key held down, another unit of food from your inventory will automatically be placed on your cursor, ready to right click again!

Warning: Edible forageables, Like for example, Candleberry or Bloated Bolete, also count as fodder, so be careful when shift-right clicking as you will loose them.

The Chicken Coop can also be filled directly using a Wheelbarrow, bucket, or Food Trough.

Swill, the byproduct of filling a Chicken Coop, or mixing foodstuffs, can be stored in barrels, buckets and troughs, and transferred between all structures which require it.

And that would be it --Reyajh (talk) 10:34, 6 June 2018 (EDT)

That looks great! I should mention we already have a swill page, so creating a fodder page that redirects to swill would be better. We tend to name items exactly as they're seen in game too help avoid confusion.

If you have any specific questions on how to do something, feel free to message MvGulik, KitsuneG, or myself. All three of us are active on the wiki (and semi active on the forums), so one of us should be able to answer any questions.

Well that makes sense. The reason I was going to do it is because after following the 'Special pages' link, under 'Wanted pages' Fodder was in the list, which brought me here to begin with (it was the first link.) But, I guess those lists are generated automatically. -Thanks Ricky!