buying chickens is impossible

[DrwHem]

i have sent out 3 caravans to other cities and each caravan "brought back" chickens. the problem is, the chickens come back wild and a fox kills them before they can manage to get them home. there needs to be some sort of grace period here or something. I have lost 6 chickens like this and none have made it to my pen,

[messy]

you need to rope the chicken (or any animal that you bought) right away when your caravan back and hope for the best, its tedious like hell

[Glxss]

I've created safe, wall enclosed chicken coops near the edges of the map where the wild ones come in. Light it up to discourage predators and then I can at least move the chickens from safe spot to safe spot

[Kjoris2]

turn on animal handling on the settler you sent for the caravan, and when they are back pause the game en tell them to immediately rope a chicken back to the settlement.

they usually go back to the settlement first but this way they immediately take one back with them.

and this also gives you a 2 hour period in which the animals can't be attacked, giving your other settlers time to get to the chickens.

do give give them the order to get them yourself, that way it will get done way faster. because if there animal handling job is not set to 1 they usually take a wile to go get them and might not always focus on the chickens first.

[tlsrace]

never buy a chicken older than 5d, they have a short life span. Be careful how many males you buy as they only have i use. My dead chickens are set out to feed my cats and dogs. To use chickens as meat to cook is a waste of a cooks time.

This is not to say that chickens are useless as i usually have a pen with 20 to 30 chickens.

update reason for buying young chickens... if caravan take 3 to 4 days to return adds to life of chickens... 20 day old chicken is OLD
You may actually be having chickens die of old age, not a glitch to the game