Chickens are passive animal mobs that live throughout the Overworld.
Behavior
Chickens are slower than most mobs. One ability unique to chickens, is that they flap their wings when falling, safely floating down to the ground, and avoiding fall damage. Chicks also flap their wings to prevent death in water, while other baby mobs drown in water deeper than 2 blocks. Chickens will follow players who are holding seeds. This is particularly useful when trying to corral them into a fenced area. Adult chickens will lay an egg every 5-10 minutes. An egg will remain on the ground for quite some time after being laid by a chicken, allowing a player time to gather it before despawning.
Breeding
Feeding two chickens who are standing near each other wheat seeds, beetroot seeds, melon seeds or pumpkin seeds will produce a chick. Like other mobs, the two parent chickens cannot enter "Love Mode" for another 5 minutes after making a chick. Alternatively, chicks can be spawned 1/8 of the time when an egg is thrown.
Chicks are the baby counterpart of chickens, and are the third smallest mob in the game. Any time an egg is thrown, there is a 12.5% chance that a chick will spawn, or a 0.390625% chance that 4 chicks will spawn from the same egg. One can be sure that a chick will spawn by breeding two chickens, which is why this is the preferred method. Chicks will always follow the nearest adult chicken. Like many baby mobs, chicks have a head that is the same size as an adult, but their body size and feet/leg size is noticeably smaller.
Drops
- Egg - Laid by a chicken every 5-10 minutes. These items can be used as a damaging projectile, which has an 1/8 chance to spawn a new chick upon impact, as well as a 1/32 chance of spawning three, and a 1/256 chance of four. Eggs are also one of the ingredients used to bake cake.
- Raw Chicken - A source of food for players. Each chicken will drop 1 drumstick when killed, which must be cooked before a player can safely eat it.
- Cooked Chicken - If a chicken is killed by fire or lava, it will drop ready-to-eat meat (cooked chicken).
- Feather - One feather is dropped when a chicken is killed. They can be used to craft arrows, or a book and quill.
Trivia
- Chickens will sometimes spawn underground, or in the Nether. This is due to the existence of chicken jockeys and pigman Jockeys.
- Chickens are the only mobs other than bosses that can be spawned without commands or Creative Mode being active.
- When using an egg, the chick that spawns may sometimes spawn before the egg is removed, causing it to appear to take damage (aesthetic only); this is also caused when the next egg a player throws hits the chick.
- In the changelog for Pocket Edition version 0.3.0, chickens were referred to as ducks.
- Unusually, on the Legacy Console Editions (Xbox, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4 editions) of Minecraft, chickens can be fed Nether warts.
Gallery
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