Egg

An egg is a food object added in the 7 Seecret Friday Update. They are laid by chickens at some intervals, usually within 4-5 minutes of each chicken. This has been proven by throwing many chickens into a coop and counting the eggs after set periods of times. If you want to obtain eggs, the best way is to throw some eggs into a boxed structure, and wait. Rinse and repeat, and you should have a large chicken coop.

On the 6 of December 2010, Notch stated that eggs would be throwable and that when they hit something they have a 1/8 chance of spawning a chicken. The Minecraft Beta Update (20 of December, 2010) implemented this, also giving eggs the same on-hit effect as snowballs and making them only stackable to 16.

A single egg is required in the crafting of Cake, which was added in the 1.2 update.

Trivia

 * Eggs may spawn more than one chicken when thrown (up to four)
 * Eggs were made throwable at the request of a fan, as a result of this Twitter conversation.

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