Egg

Eggs are items that can be used to craft food items, or used as a throwable entity.

Chickens
Chickens lay eggs every 5–10 minutes and these can be collected while on the ground.

Combat
Players are able to throw eggs at mobs and give the same effect as if the mob were being damaged by a weapon. They deal to Ender Dragons (except when hit in the head), but no damage to other mobs. Eggs can also be fired from dispensers and are affected by gravity. Throwing eggs at neutral mobs will provoke them.

Spawning chickens
When thrown, an egg has a $1⁄8$ chance of spawning a chick. If this occurs, there is a $1⁄32$ chance of spawning three additional chicks (on average, 1 out of every 256 eggs will spawn 4 chicks). In other words, whenever an egg is thrown, there is a $31⁄256$ chance of spawning 1 chick and a $1⁄256$ chance of spawning four chicks.

The expected value of the number of chicks an egg produces is $35⁄256$ or 0.137. This means that on average, spawning a single chicken requires 7.3 eggs, a stack of 16 eggs will spawn 2.1875 chicks, and a full inventory including the hotbar (36*16=576 eggs) will spawn approximately 78.75 chicks.

Trivia

 * If the player is standing near a chicken when it lays an egg, a "pop" can be heard.
 * Eggs will break midfall if hit by another projectile; the chance of spawning a baby chicken is not affected.
 * Throwing an egg at a Nether portal will break the egg when it hits the portal.