Suggest 'Container': Chicken Coop

[Rane]

Someone mentioned that having a chicken take up the same amount of barn space as a cow was kinda silly. So what about a Chicken Coop?

A Chicken Coop is a 'storage' item (similar to a Dish Rack) that has one tile for the item and one tile for access. Selecting a Chicken Coop will show the internal spaces of the coop: eight slots for Chickens, and 8 slots for the Egg the Chicken is sitting on. The Chicken accesses the Coop using the access tile, and a Fellow can stand on the access tile to remove an unfertilized Egg and to remove Poop.

Coops do not retain heat, and are intended to be placed in a temperature-controlled area.
Construction of a Coop would consist of Logs and Branches, and default to all Chicken slots being 'X'ed out. Un-Xing a Chicken slot results in needing to add 8 Straw in order to build a nesting space in that slot. The nesting spaces would decay like a normal Animal Bed and need to be replenished like normal.

In the event that all 8 slots are occupied by 8 hens, a rooster can still enter the coop for the purpose of fertilizing an egg. I don't think this would need to be displayed by the user 'seeing' the rooster in the Coop, by selecting the Coop while the rooster is in it. The rooster would just enter the coop, not appear in any of the (hypothetically full) slots, and the egg would become fertilized and the rooster would exit again in to the world. -- Edit: ignore this, I apparently don't know how birds work. Whups.

If an egg hatches into a Chick and the coop is full, the Chick gets kicked out onto the access tile and begins to search for the nearest available animal bed, be it in another Coop or just one in the barn.

Food and water are not stored in the Coop. The Chicken exits the Coop to eat and drink from the Troughs, and returns. The existence of a Coop does not alter the need for a Critter Door in a barn wall.

I'm not opposed to these numbers being six instead of eight. But if one cow takes up one tile, then one tile can hold four chicken, and two cows can be worth the space of eight chickens. And since the Coop has an access tile, making it a 1x2 item, eight feels like the right number.

If ducks or other birds ever get introduced, they should be able to use Coop spaces as well. Possibly this item then needs to be named Fowl Coop?

Anyway, what do y'all think? Anyone have additions, something I didn't think of?

[oetzina]

Rane, was it you who wrote the Wiki article about chicken on Clanfolk Wiki as well? I am quite amused by your description of the rooster fertilizing the egg. The real biology behind the fertilized egg is replicated in the game by having the rooster and hen mate before the hen lays an egg. You can see the heart for mating when a hen and rooster meet for mating quite often.

[Rane]

Heh! No, I have not written anything on the Clanfolk Wiki. I visited the Wiki like once, when I was just starting to play, and went 'ok while it could be fun to learn how to handle Wiki biznis, I think I want to let some Early Access time pass and let some things get settled before I even think about that.' Maybe in the future I'll be a wiki contributor, or editor or whatever the name is. But so far, that's not me.

Also I, uh, apparently know nothing about chicken reproduction. Maybe I was thinking of fish, that the female lays the eggs and then the male comes along. Whups >_> I also, uh, haven't actually dealt with in-game Chickens in like...... a good little while. All I remember is 'omg there are so many chickens and now I have like an entire Pantry Shelf full of Eggs and there's nothing to do with them, my Folk aren't eating them : x' and that was like, four games ago. I only just the other day started picking up female Chickens from some Traders, to see how the Cooked Egg recipe seems to be faring... but I haven't gotten any males so I haven't seen at all how the game handles that part.

[oetzina]

I just visited the Wiki the first time and wanted to give feedback somewhere about the fertilized egg explanation. Then you wrote here in the same vein and I thought it could be you. Apparently you are not alone in your understanding. Just think about the thickness etc of an eggshell. How would the rooster even get in there? ;)

[Judaspriester]

Hmm... a chicken coop as seperate 2 tile building... I'm not sure I like that idea. But I agree with you that there should be a more space efficient animal bed for the chicken. Maybe some kind of rack made of hay, timber and nails which allows more chicken per tile. Since this would "just" replace the regular animal bed, there is also no need to rethink about the rooster/mating mechanics.

For the numbers, I would also prefere to keep even ones. so my feeling would say 4 on a 1x1 object or preferable 6 on a 1x2 (comparable to log shelves).

[ad.ducti]

I appreciate the idea of the tread author. At the same time, i think, chicken should be able to sleep on the floor, they die to fast in cause of sleep lack.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by ad.ducti:

I appreciate the idea of the tread author. At the same time, i think, chicken should be able to sleep on the floor, they die to fast in cause of sleep lack.

Lack of "sleep" isn't really the problem. Being outside in the rain is (once winter hits, being outside in the cold is even worse). You need to put animal beds under a roof so they have a place to shelter from the rain, and once it gets into fall, the beds need to be indoors in a warm room (with a critter door, since chickens can't use the barn doors).

If you don't have the animal beds yet, and the animals are in bad enough condition that you're worried they might get sick, you can manually order them to a sheltered location, and use the "stop" command to keep them from moving. Just make sure to keep an eye on them and un-stop them once it stops raining (or if their food and water gets too low). This isn't necessary unless their "care" stat is already really low; they can take a few days of rain as long as the weather is warm.

[Rane]

Originally posted by Judaspriester:

Hmm... a chicken coop as seperate 2 tile building... I'm not sure I like that idea.

Not "building", exactly? It would be a 'container', like the Dish Rack, intended to go inside an enclosed Room, and have its contents viewable by clicking on it, like a Branch Pile or anything else.

Originally posted by Judaspriester:

(snip) Since this would "just" replace the regular animal bed, there is also no need to rethink about the rooster/mating mechanics.

Yeah, I uh, am embarrassed to say what I thought bird mating mechanics consisted of. I guess I just brain-farted for a moment about how that happens. I should go strikethrough that part of my original post >__>

Originally posted by Judaspriester:

For the numbers, I would also prefere to keep even ones. so my feeling would say 4 on a 1x1 object or preferable 6 on a 1x2 (comparable to log shelves).

6 on a 1x2 wouldn't feel too light, if there are also 6 'separate' slots for the Eggs.

[Kiyalynn]

As a chicken farmer I think having a wall mounted chicken nest would be the most realistic. See, Chickens don't like to sleep on the ground, it's far too dangerous for them so they roost on anything available (rafters, open doors, trees ect.) even if there aren't enough nests. So farmers build wall mounted boxes (frequently 2-3 nests high) or in some cases have free standing nests. Honestly as small as you can make chicken nests I could see a 1x1 wall mounted nest housing 4-8 chickens depending on how the devs want to balance.

Chickens should also brood on more than one egg. Seriously, chickens don't sit on one egg at a time, a group of them will lay eggs in the same nest with one chicken sitting on them to hatch a batch of chicks. Ideally, I would like to see a separate 'brooding nest' so that we can actually gather unfertilized eggs from the other nests without separating our hens from roosters. Basically telling clanfolk to gather and eat all eggs except the ones in that nest (which is how we breed chickens, gather all the eggs from the other nests leave the one nest with a brooding chicken, yes we eat the fertilized eggs). We could even 'stop' the brooding nest for chicken population control (basically telling clanfolk to eat all the eggs). Right now managing unfertilized eggs is a PITA.

I would like to point out that cows look silly on a one tile bed... I think there should also be a 1x2 tile bed specifically for cows with all the other animals staying on the smaller beds. 1x2 tile animal beds could even open the door for having horses and creating barns with stalls.

[Kiyalynn]

You know... just looking at the game the 'pantry shelves' look about what a realistic chicken nest would look like (just need some added hay/straw in the slots). Even having already divided slots for chickens making a nice dozen chickens in a 2x1 tile with a 'person slot' which would all work perfectly.

[Kiyalynn]

Another thought, if the devs don't want to make a separate brooding nest, they could just have a pantry shelf - like chicken nest cluster with a toggle-able option (like the keep fire lit option) that allows you to order clanfolk to leave eggs (with gathering the eggs for eating being default). Would solve alot of chicken issues.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Kiyalynn:

Ideally, I would like to see a separate 'brooding nest' so that we can actually gather unfertilized eggs from the other nests without separating our hens from roosters.

The hens do produce unfertilized eggs sometimes, even if there are roosters present. Currently your people will automatically pick up all unfertilized eggs and move them to food storage; if you want to get rid of a fertilized egg, select it and hit the "bomb" icon, and it will be converted to an unfertilized egg, which someone will eventually collect and store.

I suspect a "container" for live animals would be awkward to implement. Also, if you want some sort of visual representation of the current occupants, it would look pretty strange, since the chickens would have to be depicted as much smaller than they are in the world if you want to fit 12 of them on 2 tiles.

[Kiyalynn]

Originally posted by Philtre:

The hens do produce unfertilized eggs sometimes, even if there are roosters present. Currently your people will automatically pick up all unfertilized eggs and move them to food storage; if you want to get rid of a fertilized egg, select it and hit the "bomb" icon, and it will be converted to an unfertilized egg, which someone will eventually collect and store.

O.o I've never gotten unfertilized eggs from my chickens. Maybe I run too many roosters? I don't know, but it is far from a reliable source of food to 'hope' for chickens to lay unfertilized eggs. As for manually 'destroying' EVERY SINGLE EGG... yeah that's a PITA. My solution in current implementation would be to separate male and female chickens but even that is a pain. Ideally chickens reproduce far too much for my tastes, I would really like to be able to just tell my clanfolk to just gather ALL the eggs.

[Kiyalynn]

Originally posted by Philtre:

I suspect a "container" for live animals would be awkward to implement. Also, if you want some sort of visual representation of the current occupants, it would look pretty strange, since the chickens would have to be depicted as much smaller than they are in the world if you want to fit 12 of them on 2 tiles.

I honestly don't think code wise that a container for live animals would work much different than the animal beds or food troughs. I'm not a programmer but they already have code for both storage containers and animals interacting with objects. It shouldn't be much extra to program interact with this container trigger x graphic for going to bed in container, spawn egg in container.

As far as the chickens 'shrinking', honestly the chickens in game are HUGE, the size of a pig... up to the knee on my people. They could use some shrinking. I doubt they would do that for visual purposes, however the easy solution here is just like the other storage containers. The clay gets shrunk when put into its box, it doesn't look bad, most of the other things are altered in some way to fit into their containers too, none of it looks bad. Do those changes between the on the floor items and the in storage bother you? Having the chicken's head poking out of the bottom nests with chickens on the top sitting fully tucked in (as they do to keep extremities warm), would look just fine. It would work and look very similar to current pantry shelves which drastically cut the item of the bottom most shelf in order to make 12 items fit in the space of two (exactly like the chickens), and have it look good.

[Rane]

The idea of mounting it on the wall makes me think of the Stone Fireplace. What if the Coop required a Wall, and had the one tile right next to the wall that it occupies, and one tile in front of it that is the access tile? Maybe the access tile contains a bit of art that looks a bit like a ladder, and the chicken is still visible while it's on the access tile, and then it's not visible while it's in the Coop? I guess the only real 'visible' change between 'there are Chickens in the Coop' and 'there are no Chickens in the Coop' would be if the Heat Overlay was on... the Coop would be hot like an animal, if there were Chickens in it. Then you click on it and see the eight-or-six slots for the Chickens, that either do or don't have Hay in the slot, chicken in the slot, and the same number of slots for the Egg, that does or doesn't have an Egg in it.

I'm not, at this time, pondering alterations to the fertilization time-schedule mechanic. I have, long ago, gotten accustomed to building separate barn areas and outdoor fenced-in grazing areas for my male animals and my female animals, to control the animal population. I would end up with insane amounts of leather and meat otherwise. When I want more sheep, I take a female sheep and walk her to the male side until she's pregnant, and then I walk her back. It's a little fiddly but I don't have to do it too often, and I easily end up with tons of animals by year 3-4. If I wanted fertilized eggs, I would send a rooster or two over for a day or so, then send him back. At this point, I'm only thinking of storage mechanics, to make having six chickens seem space-comparable to six sheep. (By which I mean, six chickens should take up less space than six sheep.)

[Judaspriester]

Originally posted by Kiyalynn:

My solution in current implementation would be to separate male and female chickens but even that is a pain. Ideally chickens reproduce far too much for my tastes, I would really like to be able to just tell my clanfolk to just gather ALL the eggs.

My solution for this is slaughter/sell all roosters once I got enough chicken growing. It may not be nice, but it works.

Besides that, modified pantry shelves or something similar that requires to be mounted onto the walls sounds like a fine idea.