Conjoined Chicken Coops

[melmmhs94]

I just started a new ranch and I’m getting to the point where I need to decide what type of ranch I want.
For now, for the sake of keeping things simple (all the larger animals are NOT simple!) but still being successful at it, I decided to focus on raising chickens.

I already have a hatching coop area - two small coops with a small open area between them that’s fenced off, leaving space for the troughs so the chicks can run around. I move them to the old barn when they age up. Roosters get sold right off but hens I keep for a while.

Would this same idea work for the breeding coop with the drawers? If I can get multiple coops together with one central pen, then I can have a whole lot of breeding pairs. But how can I be sure that every single hen lays every single hen in a drawer? I won’t be able to sneak in most nights and collect the eggs in the central area, I need the eggs in the drawers. Has someone already tried this idea? How did it work?
Or am I better off having a bunch of drawer coops and leaving them isolated?

[Maya-Neko]

I would argue, that pigs are definitely the simplest animals, given that the only thing you need to take care of is feeding them, until they're big enough to be butchered. That's what you need to do for literally all animals, but unlike pigs, the other ones also add milk or eggs onto it.

And as far as i can tell, there's no real difference between the different coops. Their only purpose seems to be attracting chickens, so that they lay eggs within it instead of anywere.

As for the breeding, the ideal ratio is 1 hen per 1 rooster, as each rooster can only fertilize one hen per day. So if your goal is to sell meat, then try to get that ratio right. To achieve that it's obviously best to take fertilized eggs out of the coop and put them somewhere seperate, until they hatch and grow to adulthood, where you can either put them back in pairs or butcher them. If you only want to sell eggs, then a full coop of only hens works here as well, especially since you don't need to worry about being attacked here. Just make sure, that the areas for your meet chickens is far enough away, so that you don't accidentally fertilize eggs of the non-fertilizer-coops.

[melmmhs94]

True pigs don’t need to be milked and that milk processed, but the butchering of a large animal is plenty of hardship for me since my mouse isn’t great and my graphics card can barely play the game. I’m saving for a custom build that should be able to handle the game on full power, but I can’t rely on it.

Chickens can be picked up, placed in a vehicle and sold alive to the store - alive is their most profitable state. I don’t NEED to process the meat of a carcass.
But pigs’ most profitable state is dead and butchered, and processed meat is more profitable than unprocessed chunks.

So pigs, for me, are not the simple animals I want. Thanks though! I appreciate that!

As for the coops, I know that’s their main purpose but how well does it work when they’re spread out and their doors are left open so the chickens wander into an open pen, away from the drawers? I don’t have the time to build the pen system and wait, only for it to fail and have to demolish nearly every coop AND the pen and start over. That’s why I’m hoping someone has already tried this idea and can give me some insight.

[Maya-Neko]

In terms of processing power, chickens are definitely the worst. A fully grown pig drops 26 meat. Hens on the other side lay 1 egg per day. So once you've at least 26 hens in a coop it starts to be worse than pigs, not to mention that you probably let some eggs laying down to be hatched.

As for the coops, i only use the biggest one and you can leave the side of it open all the time, as there's still an invisible wall for the chickens (just make sure to grab eggs from its edge first, before opening it). I would guess, that using the drawers also only pulls out the eggs, but i've never tried it, given that i need to go into the coop anyway for all the manure.

[melmmhs94]

That’s precisely what I want - not to be processing. When I come home from a long day at my fast food job and I’m overwhelmed, I want to be able to pull up this ranch, do a few tasks, and then let it run for an hour while I read a book.
Every other large farm animal has to be processed constantly in order for me to keep up and I already have a ranch that does that, and I still play it when I’m in the mood to get a lot done in the game when I don’t have a lot to do IRL.

Actually, you don’t need to do the manure cleaning. The game will wipe it away after a few days and it does nothing to harm or benefit the livestock, so there’s no reason to clean it. Also I’ve used the big coop before and it’s not great for collecting eggs without going in, and since my food and water troughs are automated and I don’t clean manure, I don’t have reason to go in except to drop off eggs and take out hens. So this coop isn’t ideal for me.
The drawers are programmed so hens in the coop will lay only on a drawer so pulling out the drawer gets you all the eggs without risking the wrath of Mama Chicken. But that’s the kicker - in the coop. If I join multiple coops into one central area and leave the doors open, will the chickens still lay on the drawers or will they lay in the grass too. That’s the question I’d like answered.

[eggzntaters]

Yes, if the chickens can roam outside the coop, some will lay eggs outside. The way the game is set up, all the chickens suddenly lay an egg at the same time. Unfertilized eggs drop at 16:00, fertile eggs drop at 10:00. If a hen happens to be outside, that's where the egg will drop.

[melmmhs94]

Originally posted by eggzntaters:

Yes, if the chickens can roam outside the coop, some will lay eggs outside. The way the game is set up, all the chickens suddenly lay an egg at the same time. Unfertilized eggs drop at 16:00, fertile eggs drop at 10:00. If a hen happens to be outside, that's where the egg will drop.

Thank you for a helpful answer! I will use isolated coops then.

[Phae]

Originally posted by melmmhs94:

True pigs don’t need to be milked and that milk processed, but the butchering of a large animal is plenty of hardship for me since my mouse isn’t great and my graphics card can barely play the game. I’m saving for a custom build that should be able to handle the game on full power, but I can’t rely on it.

Chickens can be picked up, placed in a vehicle and sold alive to the store - alive is their most profitable state. I don’t NEED to process the meat of a carcass.
But pigs’ most profitable state is dead and butchered, and processed meat is more profitable than unprocessed chunks.

So pigs, for me, are not the simple animals I want. Thanks though! I appreciate that!

As for the coops, I know that’s their main purpose but how well does it work when they’re spread out and their doors are left open so the chickens wander into an open pen, away from the drawers? I don’t have the time to build the pen system and wait, only for it to fail and have to demolish nearly every coop AND the pen and start over. That’s why I’m hoping someone has already tried this idea and can give me some insight.

With what someone just added about a rooster can only fertilize one hen a day that makes chickens the absolute worst choice. However, I have been working on the chickens and for the most part the one with drawers is best in regards to ease of collection (they will still attack you but putting the egg into the basket seems to stop them). For the most part the hens will lay in the drawers but I find if the chickens have access to free roam you still will find eggs other than the houses. Easiest time to collect eggs is when they are sleeping. Then to make your fertile egg count better means according to the earlier post you will need (ie 10 hens + 10 roosters) I will tell you I am finding a great deal of lag lately and I was told that too many chickens will cause that. I reduced my chickens and some of my buildings and only have 2 coops with the bottom fenced and the house over it and a couple of the smaller ones that open with the slanted roof for my chicks. It did help on the lag. Let us know how it works out. To insure a better fertilize count you need to put the eggs in the checker machine with it on and as you put them in the basket then it will show the fertile ones so you can put them in a separate basket and then put them where you have a hen to tend them till they hatch. You will find your chick production will go up.

[melmmhs94]

hi! So, its been a while since I posted! Here's the requested update:

In addition to the breeding coops - I maxed out at three, each with 10 hens and 10 roosters (I didn't see the message about low chick rate due to too many hens) - collecting eggs everyday and candling each and every egg and sorting them. I tried a simple design of two small coops for fertilized eggs and chicks facing each other but doors opposite each other (EX, both facing the central pen area but the coop on the right's door is facing the part of the left coop that doesn't have its door. In doing so, both doors can be held open without taking up too much space in the pen area and without interferring with each other's operations) and I would move the adult birds to the rundown barn that I had retrofitted for this purpose, and waiting until there were enough to take to the store and sell. When that setup became too small because I had added another breeding coop and thus was producing and hatching more fertilized eggs, I upgraded to a similar layout but with the large coops with the 30 hen capacity and a larger pen area. That served me quite well mostly because I kept all of my chicks in the coop I could access outside of the pen, and let the adult birds roam the other coop and pen, keeping the roosters in the barn.
I didn't try to go larger than that because I was going to try raising horses. Yeah, that didn't go nearly as well as I'd hoped - its too much work for what I wanted to be doing with my time and the reputed profit wasn't nearly profitable enough - so I tore down the horse corral, put down some drawer coop blueprints, some silo blueprints, etc and generally started things rolling on the the new setup...Chicken farm producing only unfertilized eggs. No more hatching, no more candling eggs, no more transporting mass quantities of birds. But getting it set up has been more work than I thought it would be and even once it is set up its still gonna be a lot of work with more silos to add to bring the level of 'I can leave the game alone for a while now' comfort without worrying about my birds dying. I can't currently do that until I get SO MANY silos in because I have 25 20-hen coops laid down so that's a max of 500 hens. If I'm an active, on-the-ball player, I'd be collecting 500 eggs every game day which I don't think I can do even with the full 24-hour period and the correct settings. But if I leave the game, then I'm just going to fall further and further behind and I don't know what will happen to forgotten eggs.
So I may call this game a learning experience and scrap what I've built. I may delete the whole game or I may try to salvage the simple set up I had before and modify it to three or four drawer coops of hens for just producing unfertilized eggs for sale. I haven't decided yet. Thoughts?

[Phae]

I have raised chickens not to you high level but collecting the eggs can and is a full time job if you have enough chickens. Raising chicks is a good deal of work but takes time. Not too mention if you get too many chickens it seems the lag gets worse. I have notice lag getting worse in general recently as well.
I have noticed that raising cattle and even pigs at this time also seem to be much slower than when I first started. However, I do find animals dead for no apparent reason; meaning food and water is fine . Even horses die sometimes and you can't breed them at this time anyway. Training the horses to be able to sell at auction is really a great deal of work and don't see it being worth it at this time anyway. It really takes a great deal of time to train the horse up and your just running in circles in the pen. My milk cows and goats do okay for a money maker with milk, cheese. But I have seen a lot of slow down in breeding any of the animals.

[Zedorda]

Wow I quit working with chickens and pigs as soon as I figured out cows can be penned in tiny fenced cubicles and milked with ease with the automated milkers. So I built a custom stable with 12 slots at 6 per side for the cows. With a catwalk between and 2 milkers. Just focused on blue cheese can make 10s of thousands of dollars a day without much work or clicking needed with high FPS to boot. IMHO adding chickens to the mix makes for a lot more work for tiny increases to profit and huge FPS hits.