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This article is about the mob. For its raw meat, see Raw Chicken. For its cooked meat, see Cooked Chicken.

Chickens (also known as Ducks on Pocket Edition[1]) are egg-laying passive mobs.

Spawning

Natural generation

Chickens naturally generate on grass blocks with 2 blocks of free space above it at light level of 9 or more.

Baby chicken

Main article: Breeding
Minichicken

A chick with its parents.

Chickens can be bred with wheat seeds (or beetroot seeds, melon seeds or pumpkin seeds in Pocket Edition), producing a baby chicken.

Thrown eggs have an 18 chance to spawn a baby chicken. If successful, there is a 132 chance to spawn 4 chicks instead. If the egg was thrown at a wall at certain angles, the chicken may spawn in the wall, causing suffocation.

Baby chickens will grow up in 20 minutes, although the growth can be accelerated by wheat seeds; each use reduces 10% of the remaining time.

Drops

Chickens drop from 0 to 2 feathers, and 1 unit of raw chicken. If a chicken dies while on fire, it drops cooked chicken instead of raw chicken. The amount of raw chicken (or cooked chicken) dropped is not affected by the Looting enchantment.

Chickens drop 1-3 experience when killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior

Chickens are 0.875 blocks tall, 0.5 blocks wide and 0.8125 blocks long.

Chickens appear to wander around aimlessly, and usually swim in water. When falling they will flap their wings quickly and fall slowly, making them immune to fall damage. Despite this, they will still avoid falling off cliffs high enough to cause fall damage.

While in a loaded chunk, a chicken will lay one egg every 5 to 10 minutes (6000 to 12000 ticks), unless it is (or was) a part of a chicken jockey. If you are close enough to a chicken when it lays an egg, a popping sound can be heard.

They share some behaviors with other "farm animals":

  • They are drawn to light when in a dark environment.
  • When struck, they run around quickly and aimlessly.
  • They can swim, visibly flapping their wings as they stay on the surface.
  • They can be led around by holding a seed, and are also able to breed with seeds.

Chickens are attacked by wild ocelots.

Chicks do not lay eggs. Due to their small size, they can pass through openings even smaller than a full block, though not willingly. A chick's height is somewhere in between 0.51 to 0.80 blocks.

Video

Note: This video is outdated, Raw Chicken now causes nausea instead of poison. Chicken/video Note: This video is outdated, Chickens are bred from Seeds instead of Wheat.

History

a
1.0.14Added chickens.
b
1.0Chickens can be spawned by throwing eggs.
1.8Chickens now drop raw chicken. Before this, chickens dropped only feathers upon death.
Chickens will run away when attacked.
r
1.0.0Beta 1.9-pre2Chickens can be bred with wheat.
Beta 1.9-pre3Baby chickens were added.
1.2.112w04aOcelots attack chickens.
12w07aChickens have new AI.
1.4.212w36aChickens now use wheat seeds, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds and nether wart instead of wheat to breed.
12w38aAdded new step sounds.
1.7.413w49aAdded chicken jockeys - baby zombies found riding chickens.
1.814w02aBaby chicken growth can be accelerated using seeds.
14w34dChickens can no longer be bred using melon seeds, pumpkin seeds, or nether wart.
pa
0.3.0Added chickens.
0.6.0Chickens and chicks now spawn randomly.
0.7.0Chickens now lay eggs and have a 1 in 8 to spawn a chick and a 1 in 254 chance an egg will hatch 4 chickens.
0.8.0Chickens follow the player if the player holds pumpkin seeds, melon seeds, beetroot seeds, or wheat seeds.
Thrown eggs can now spawn baby chickens.
0.10.0Chickens no longer have a black texture on their chin.
Legacy Console Edition
TU1Added chickens.
TU5Chicken will run away when attacked.
TU7Added baby chickens.
Chicken can now be bred with seeds.
TU14Baby chickens can now be spawned by using Left trigger on an adult form of that mob using a spawn egg.

Issues

Issues relating to "Chicken" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

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.
  • Chickens are able to "hide" within hoppers due to their small size, protecting them from lava or water that might be directly on top of the hopper.
  • A few weeks before the end of Beta, Notch tweeted that he changed the chickens to ducks,[2] causing a turmoil on Twitter. A few days later, Jeb, still getting feedback on the idea, stated that it was just a joke.[3]
  • While you are loading/creating/exiting a world on Console Edition, the message that appears can say "Is it a Chicken, or a duck?". Also, the summary for the mobs avatars at the end says "... and a chicken... Or is it a duck?".

Gallery

See also

References


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