Chicken

Chickens (sometimes called Ducks ) are passive mobs that supply feathers, raw chicken, chicken eggs, and even cooked chicken (cooked chicken supplied only if chicken if killed by fire). Chickens are 0.875 blocks tall, 0.5 blocks wide and 0.8125 blocks long.

Appearance
Chickens have white feathers and wings, yellow beaks, yellow feet and red wattles. Their texture is somewhat checkered, like wool. Although they are around 1x1 blocks, their chicks are half their size but have large heads compared to their bodies.

Behavior

 * While in a loaded chunk, a chicken lays one egg approximately every 7.5 minutes (6000 to 12000 ticks).
 * They follow the player if they are holding wheat seeds, melon seeds, or pumpkin seeds.
 * When a chicken falls from a ledge, it quickly flaps its wings and falls slowly to the ground to prevent fall damage.
 * Chickens appear to wander around aimlessly, not even attempting to stay out of water.
 * They are drawn to light in a dark environment.
 * They flap their wings in water to keep above the surface.
 * If burned to death they will drop cooked chicken. (With e.g. Flint and steel or Lava.)

Breeding
There are two ways to breed chickens; hatching eggs or feeding adult chickens seeds (wheat, melon, pumpkin or Nether Wart). Both can be done simultaneously, increasing their spawn rate.

Hatching Eggs: Chickens can be hatched by throwing chicken eggs on the ground or a wall. Each egg has a 1/8th chance of hatching a chick, including a 1/256th chance of hatching 4 chicks. A full stack of 16 eggs has an 88% chance of producing at least one chick. WARNING: When throwing eggs against a wall, the chick will spawn inside the block and suffocate if the angle of the surface you are aiming at is greater than 45 degrees from your position. This is because at that angle, the game is unable to process the small surface and spawns the chick on the surface behind that. See diagram:

Feeding Chickens: Feeding two fully grown chickens seeds will spawn a chick, which grows into an adult after approximately 20 minutes. Adult chickens can be bred about every 5 minutes.

Chicks
Successfully breeding two chickens or breaking enough chicken eggs spawns a chick.


 * Chicks move faster than adults.
 * They take about 20 minutes to fully mature.
 * As a chick, they do not lay eggs and do not drop resources/experience if killed, like any other baby mob.
 * Chicks follow their parents or other adult chickens until they grow into an adult.
 * Chicks can swim in water if they try.

Farming
Farming chickens is beneficial, as it provides a renewable source of chicken eggs, raw/cooked chicken, feathers, and XP. As with other animals, you will want to keep them in an enclosed or fenced area so they don't wander off. Chicken farms can generate quite a bit of noise; you probably will want to build large farms at least sixteen blocks away from frequently used areas.

Remember that ungathered eggs will vanish after 5 minutes -- merging stacks does extend that, but even so, if you're trying to build a large population you'll want to gather them several times a day. If a pen of chickens is abandoned (all chicks grow up, then eggs are not gathered for at least 5 minutes), the next egg harvest will average at least 70% of the number of chickens (hatching to about 83%).

Automatic egg farms can be created by placing chickens in a pool of water suspended by signs. When the chickens lay eggs, they fall through the water into a collection area.

In the Minecraft snapshot 13w01, hoppers were introduced. Putting one of these below the output of an egg farm automatically collects the eggs for you. Add a chest below that to store the eggs, or, if you are feeling creative, add an automatic dispenser below to turn the eggs back into chickens. Then you can wait for the chickens to age and then kill them, automatically or manually. Note that one chest full of eggs will yield an average of 64 chicks.

This video is a proper example of the new automatic farm possibilities after snapshot 13w01 with hoppers.

Trivia

 * When a chicken is killed off a ledge, the "corpse" also falls more slowly than normal, and the wings still make a flapping animation, this also happens in Pocket Edition.
 * Notch tweeted that he changed the chickens to ducks a few weeks before the end of Beta, causing a turmoil on Twitter. A few days later, Jeb, still getting feedback on the idea, stated that it was just a joke.
 * If you throw chicken eggs at glass panes or iron bars, there is a small chance that the chick spawns on the opposite side.
 * Despite being an animal that does not give live birth, chickens in-game are able to give live birth.
 * Chickens are the only animals that can repopulate from only one animal. The eggs it drops can be hatched into additional chickens, which can then breed.
 * There is no texture for the underside of a chicken's head, allowing you to see through it and see the inside.
 * Ocelots attack chickens.
 * When first released, chickens took fall damage like other mobs.