baby chickens?

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

So, do your own chickens hatch some of their own eggs or do I have to keep forking over 500 coins for more baby chicks to fill my hen house? Same question for pigs or any animals for that matter? Do we produce our own or are we forced to constantly buy more to stock our own pens?

[hubbemattsson]

You will get chickens if there are atleast one male and one female grown ups. And has nothing to do with the eggs. So those you can pick.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

how long after the adult hens reach laying age can I expect to see some chicks?

[hubbemattsson]

Random, as soon they hit adult age.

[bmnoble981]

Isn't it 15% chance per male for the female animals to breed during the season changes?

Anyway animals have a chance to breed at the end of each season provided they have food, both males and females present and space in their building for more animals. after that for chickens in game, I think it takes 1.5 years before the baby chick becomes an adult.

If your in a rush you can always just save up and buy adult chickens from the two villages that supply them, should only take a few season that way to build up your flock.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

Buy adults, surely you jest sir - I had hard enough time letting go of 500+ coins each for a couple of chicks! I have no problem letting nature take it's course here, I just never kept any animals in any of previous games so I wasn't sure what to expect is all.

[rhwilson1953]

Originally posted by bmnoble981:

Isn't it 15% chance per male for the female animals to breed during the season changes?

Anyway animals have a chance to breed at the end of each season provided they have food, both males and females present and space in their building for more animals. after that for chickens in game, I think it takes 1.5 years before the baby chick becomes an adult.

If your in a rush you can always just save up and buy adult chickens from the two villages that supply them, should only take a few season that way to build up your flock.

I know this is just a game and the developers need to take balance into consideration, but at 1.5 years even that is overboard. IRL depending on the breed a chicken starts laying eggs at an average of 18 to 20 weeks of age.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

Yes, prices aren't the only thing that are a little bit skewed in this game because of the time compression or otherwise. Some 40 years ago I operated a fish and poultry farm, not for egg layers but for fryers and the fish were rainbow trout. I believe that the interval between the time the chicks were delivered to the brooders to the time they were trucked away to the processing plant was about 20 weeks and in that last week or so I had way more eggs than I knew what to do with! Compare that to the rainbow trout which I hatched myself, which took about 18 months from the time I took them from the hatchery and placed them in the grow runs, too reach a marketable size of about 9 inches long and 3/4 lb.

[rebekaktus]

I'm pretty sure it's only 2 seasons for the chicks to grow up.
And if you're in a rush getting new chicks: save before changing the season and reload if you didn't get the reproduction you wanted.

[Wizzen One]

My chicks grow, make chicks, grow, make chicks... so forth, 1 rooster is needed per hen house. A good breeder 7+ vs craptastic one is essential.

[hubbemattsson]

The breeder ads nothing to it tho.

[Morri]

Originally posted by hubbemattsson:

The breeder ads nothing to it tho.

Indeed, despite the name of the worker, you don't actually need to assign one to get your animals to reproduce, they seem to know how to do that just fine on their own...

What is needed since a more recent patch is that they now require animal feed to reproduce, but you can put that there yourself too, no need to assign a worker for that.