Tutorials/Egg farming

Egg farming is the process of collecting a large number of chicken eggs from chickens.

Catching or Hatching a chicken
In general, you'll want to first build a pen to hold them. Single-height wooden fences (or a small cave) will suffice, but either way it's best to add an "entry lock": a fenced space with gates leading both to the pen and to outside. This will help prevent escapees—besides the obvious, if one of the gates is always closed, the chicken's pathfinding will never see an escape route to the outside.

The usual way to capture chickens is to hold wheat in your hand. Once the chickens notice you, they will follow you, and you can easily lead them into your pen. With care, chickens can even be led across water, as they will follow your boat. The alternative option is to collect chicken eggs and throw the eggs into your closed pen. There is only a 1 in 8 chance of spawning a chicken when you throw a chicken egg, so you should try to collect at least one stack (of 16). They will take some time to grow to adulthood, but once you have at least one adult chicken, it will start producing eggs... and with two or more adults, you can breed them with wheat.

Setting up the farm
You can farm chicken eggs the traditional way, where you have to run around and collect chicken eggs all the time.

Or you can, for example, build an automatic chicken egg-collecting farm by using water to flush the chicken eggs out of the coop.

One that works great is the one from the second screenshot: Just dig a square hole 11 by 11 blocks and one block deep, then dig one more layer in a circle shape. You'll need an additional one-block-hole in the center where the water (and the eggs) will flush out.

Now you need to build the "isle" to prevent the chicken from also being flushed out and to give them some ground to lay eggs that can hatch on to slowly expand the total population of chicken on your farm.

Connect the center drain hole to your system from below (F3 is your friend here), place water in the corners and you're good to go.

Alternate Method
An easy way to go AFK, and still receive a great amount of chicken eggs, is to make a farming method in which allows chickens to flow through the water and allow the eggs to fall down a small hole to a collection point.

Dig a 5x7 hole, 1 block deep. add a fence on the outer rim of the hole. Leave one spot open in case you may need to grab equipment. Now, dig 2 blocks down in the remaining hole (5x3x2), and one of the 3 block sides, dig down 4 blocks.

Now, dig a room 4 blocks long and 3 blocks high. At the end of the room, dig a hole up in the center. Put some ladders so you can get back up to the surface.

Now, cover up that spot you might have left open with fence. Get some glass, because if there are too many chickens in a confined space, they'll start to suffocate each other. To avoid that, place glass under all the fence. Now, get 3 buckets of water, and place it opposite of the collection room. Now when a chicken is in, eggs will flow in the water and into the collection room.

IF you want to start your new farm, you'll want to either throw some eggs into the farm for a chance that a chicken might pop out, or chase a chicken into your new farm. Both ways are possible. Once you have a chicken in there, simply wait at the collection point for it to spawn eggs. You can attempt to get as many chickens in your farm as you like, just beware that too many chickens could lag your game.

Another method is to set up a long coop against a wall (cross-section, you can make it as long as you want). Key 1 layer C chicken t fence A any block

1 AAAA 2 A 3 AA 4 AC 5 AA t A Keeps chickens in but you can walk on fence and get eggs

Extra
Matthew.sch has made a farm that collects chicken eggs. He made a 9x9 square then put water on the corners. Afterwards he made a hole in the center 2 blocks min. Then he put a half-slab just over the hole. Also, (this is optional) you can do the same to the corner blocks to stop the baby chickens from escaping. Finally he made another hole 3 blocks away from the farm then dug to the center from underground without opening the hole (then add your chicken and you).

Note: you may also put in a dispenser to shoot out eggs.

Antonok's Highly Efficient Method
More space efficient design: put a 2x2x2 water pool, with no downward flow, and have a 2x2x2 collection area under the water. Use signs to keep the water from entering the collection area. Put glass around the water and above it, to keep the chickens from suffocating each other in large quantities. There should be a 1 or 2 tall gap above the water for the chickens to breathe in. After this is constructed, eggs can be thrown directly up from the collection area. The chickens will float on the water and their eggs will drop to the floor for easy collection, where they can be thrown back to hatch more chickens. An almost infinite amount of chickens can be contained in the farm with a 100% drop rate. When meat or feathers are needed, a sword can be used to pick off chickens from below.

A cross section side view of each segment:

[ ] = glass [x] = any block S = sign on the wall [W] = water CCC = lots of chickens [G] = Grass

[ ][ ] [ ]     [ ]      [ ][ ][ ][ ] [ ]CCCCCC[ ]      [ ][ ][ ][ ] [ ][W][W][ ]     [ ][ ][ ][ ] [ ][W][W][ ]     [ ][ ][ ][ ] [x]S   S[x]      [x]      [x] [x]     [x]      [x]      [x] [x][x][x][x]     [x][x][x][x] Center two rows  Front and back

A water flow can be placed in the collection area to bring the eggs to one block, but this makes throwing eggs and collecting meat or feathers more difficult. Another advantage of this method is that the bottom layer of water can be used as an infinite water source.

DJ and Riggaz's More Effective Modification To Antonok's Method Above
The design above can lower the possible production of eggs. It is not known why, but under examination making this design as well as the design re-created by DJCrawf below side by side with equal amounts of chickens. The second design (below) has a 100% collection rate and produces chicken eggs far faster than the first design. The first design also causes some eggs to get stuck above the signs causing them to stay there rather than meet at a collection point.

[ ]     [ ] [ ][ ][ ][ ]      [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] [ ]                                                [ ]       [ ]        [CCC]                       [CCC]       [ ] [ ][W]                                         [W][ ] [ ][G][G][G][G][G][G][G]S   S[G][G][G][G][G][G][G][ ] [x]     [x] [x][x][x][x] Center two rows

Note that after a while, the game will get very laggy after use of these 2 variations of chicken egg farms. Therefore, it is necessary to occasionally harvest meat and feathers. For a simple tutorial of this, click here

Zero loss mass egg farm
Antonok's method produces some losses because eggs get stuck on the edges of the ladders/signs used to hold the water up.

To get around this, Begin with a 4x4 chicken pit with water sources in all the corners. This will create flow towards the square formed by the middle four blocks. See figure one.

Knock out these middle blocks to let the items fall.


 * NOTE!** You will need to build the sides of the 4x4 higher than shown or the chickens will escape. Also if you plan to have very high density of chickens, use glass for the walls of the enclosure, to prevent suffocation.

If you would like to funnel the eggs/chicken meat to a single collection point instead of to a 2x2 square, place ladders under the 2x2 hole to stop the water from falling. Enclose the 2x2 below the collection hole and knock a hole down through one corner. This will lead to your collection point. In the corner diagonally opposite the hole, place a water block or let the water fall from above. (fig 2 and 3)



Egg farm in action
This is a tutorial on how to make an egg farm. It was one of the most efficient and relatively easy to make.

Minecraft - Egg Farm Building Tutorial

This is a video of an egg farm made in 1.8. It uses glass blocks, glass panes, and water. The eggs go to a collection point for easy grabbing.

Minecraft - Egg Farm

Concept: The chickens swim in the water in the 3rd level. When they drop eggs (or you need meat and decide to annihilate the chickens), they will fall through the glass panes into the bottom layer with the help of the flowing water. The water in the bottom layer will now push the items to the collection point.

Layout:

Anleitungen/Eierfabrik