Chickens in this game are absolutely mental

[Joe Danger]

A Bulk Goods trader came by and I was selling him a lot of my stuff I didn't need to try to make some room in my stockpiles. He was a little short on silver so I decided to just buy a rooster and two hens from him just to even it out so he could pay. I didn't think too much of it at the time, I've never had chickens in the game before but I didn't think they'd be different than any other animal.

About 4 hours later and I have at least 40 maybe 50 chickens walking around my base. There are literally so many chickens that they have eaten all of the grass inside my walls and are starving themselves to death.

I have no idea what to do with all these things. At this point I'm probably just going to butcher the lot of them.

[emailbittens]

That's happened to me before. They're useful for medical training, at least - euthanizing animals rather than slaughtering them gives a lot of XP. You need herbal medicine for it though.

[definitive_prankster]

Will have to try that, I got 4 hens and 2 roosters who are now up to like 15 total (every egg I spot goes to the freezer).
I started a cull last night.

[M.K.]

Having problems feeding your chickens?
You have zillions of chickens, right?
So collect the eggs, "process" some chickens, and make meals.
Chickens LOVE meals, and they can't read the label to know they are eating Aunt Maude.

[Inquisitioner]

Originally posted by M.K.:

Having problems feeding your chickens?
You have zillions of chickens, right?
So collect the eggs, "process" some chickens, and make meals.
Chickens LOVE meals, and they can't read the label to know they are eating Aunt Maude.

I love this community :D

[bulbatrs]

Originally posted by Inquisitioner:

Originally posted by M.K.:

Having problems feeding your chickens?
You have zillions of chickens, right?
So collect the eggs, "process" some chickens, and make meals.
Chickens LOVE meals, and they can't read the label to know they are eating Aunt Maude.

I love this community :D

not so different from real life, as farms tend to feed their live stock with food that contains meat, as a result pigs eat pigs and chickens eat chickens. not so different, but on a much larger scale as those chickens that they eat might be coming form the other side of the globe.

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by bulbatrs:

Originally posted by Inquisitioner:

I love this community :D

not so different from real life, as farms tend to feed their live stock with food that contains meat, as a result pigs eat pigs and chickens eat chickens. not so different, but on a much larger scale as those chickens that they eat might be coming form the other side of the globe.

Humanity is doing great so far huh?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

You can stop them breeding by separating the roosters and hens while still getting lots of eggs, I at one point had about 20 hens and two roosters (killed/sold the extra males) for whenever I needed/wanted more hens. Planting dandelions in a large area will feed them enough, could use flowerpots indoors if the temperatures aren't ideal.

Another fun idea is boomrat artillery, breed a horde and go attack raider base then load the boomrats into drop pods and send them in ontop of the raider base. Keeps the raiders busy while you shoot them and accidentally shooting a boomrat won't matter.

[cpc8472]

Must recruit The Colonel into your colony. Grow some secret herbs and spices and problem solved! :)

[M.K.]

Originally posted by cpc8472:

Must recruit The Colonel into your colony. Grow some secret herbs and spices and problem solved! :)

How do I click a +1 or thumbs-up for this. Because it surely deserves it!

[Scythe]

Time to build yourself a pen! Grind up the male chicks (like in a real slaughterhouse) and place the females in a pen. Try to squeeze them all together to maximize space usage and feed them hay to plump those birds up! Don't forget to slaughter old hens and rotate a rooster in to breed every so often.

[czpetr]

Seems like a serious case of chickensplosion. But on the bright side, you have a lot of walking targets for your shooters.

[Japzzi]

I once had a chicken army. It was insane because there was always more chickens than raiders so the raiders would be caught in melee surrounded by chickens pecking them to death.

[Rosario]

What I do when I get livestock animals is let them breed as many as I think I can handle for an extended period, and then what I do next depends on what they are.
For chickens, I'll keep 1 rooster that I keep in a animal area away from the hens, and let it mingle when I feel like I need more, or have to replace some due to raids, disease, age, etc. Any extras are either dinner or trade items.
For cows and muffalo, I can usually grow enough hay to sustain a lot, but I typically try to keep 4-6, preferably more females.
Then there's pets that I have a mod to neuter, so they're never a major issue, maybe breed twice and neuter after.
Off the top of my head, the only other type of animal breeding you'd do is pigs and other food animals, so that's pretty easy to control.

[pmutzu]

Yes best advice is to decide how many chickens you want and kill the roosters after that. once no roosters are around the eggs will not get fertilized and you instead have a good egg source. just keep about 5 hens. and any rooster you see on the map has to die.

[Rosario]

Or just be isolated. I used to just make them dinner, but then a bandit raid killed all but 1 of my hens, so I lost most of my egg layers. With another rooster (assuming it wasn't killed too) I could have built back up.