Traditional egg-farming
Egg farming is the process of collect a large number of eggs from chickens.
Catching a chicken
Because capturing chickens is very difficult, it may be more effective to collect some eggs, build an area for your chickens, and throw the eggs into it. There is only a 1 in 8 chance of spawning a chicken when you throw an egg, so you might need quite a few.
Another way to capture chickens is to build a trench that is two blocks deep in an area with at least one chicken. The chicken will wander into the trench and be caught. You can also dig a larger hole two blocks deep, with a staircase that isn't against the wall of the hole, but one block away. This way, if you are in the hole, you can climb the staircase, and jump out of the hole.
In the 1.9 prerelease, you can simply get a chicken to follow you by luring it with wheat.
Setting up the farm
- NOTE** This technique may not work any more, due to an update.
You can farm eggs the traditional way, where you have to run around and collect eggs all the time.
Joghurts egg-farm
Or you can, for example, build an automatic egg-collecting farm by using water to flush the eggs out of the coop.
Bottom layer of Joghurts egg-farm
I tried several designs and 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 afk, and still receive a great amount of 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 incase 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 of 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 int the farm or a chance 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.
Egg farm in action
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.
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:
- Chickenfarm-1.png
Layer 1 of the chicken farm
- Chickenfarm-2.png
Glass Block border with Glass Pane interior
- Chickenfarm-3.png
Glass Block border with 4 water blocks in the middle
- Chickenfarm-4.png
Glass Block border to keep the chickens in