[Animals] Chickens - How to breed and care for them

Welcome to your next "Animal 101" lesson of the Farming Simulator Academy! Today, we’re focusing on chickens. We'll show you how to buy and care for these feathered creatures and how to make money with them. Chicken are pretty easy to care for, so they are a good choice if you just get into animal husbandry.

(Video coming soon!)

Chicken husbandry: housing & feeding

There are two types of chicken: The standard chicken and the rooster. Get a rooster if you want to breed the chicken. Before we tell you in detail, what tools and equipment you need, let's take a look at the very basics for chicken husbandry: feed and shelter. There are multiple options for how you can accommodate and feed your chicken. 

Housing options

There are two options: a pasture and a coop. You have to provide feed for all housing options and get eggs in return. The only real difference is the size, as the pasture can only fit 30 chicken. If you want to breed them and focus on a larger operation involving egg production, you should go for the coop.

Feeding options

You have four options: You can either feed the chicken with wheat, barley and sorghum you harvested from your fields, or you can buy chicken feed from the dealership directly, found in the "Bigbag" section - it's basically just wheat. It might be easier to start out with chicken by using the ready-to-go feed from the dealer, and then align your farming operations accordingly, if you're not growing wheat, barley or sorghum yet.

What you need for Chicken

Let's take a look at everything necessary to care for and keep chickens. You don't need much, except for a barn and tools to transport the eggs produced by your chickens.

• You will need a tractor with a front loader attacher and a pallet fork to care for the animals. Use the pallet fork to transport the fodder to the barn and eggs to your truck or directly to the point of sale.
• You will need a barn. You can choose between two versions in the construction menu, depending on your account balance and the amount of chicken you want to have. Under the "Chicken" tab you can choose between the chicken pasture and the chicken coop. They only differ in size.
• To make transport easier, you may want to own a pickup truck you can load the pallets of eggs onto. You can, of course, deliver them with the tractor and pallet fork to the point of sale, too - one pallet at a time.

Equipment Selection (recommendation) 

We chose the following equipment. In order to use the front loader on the tractor, you must first purchase the necessary attachment configuration at the dealership. To do this, drive the tractor to the dealership, park the machine in the vehicle options field and select the appropriate attachment on the configuration screen.

• Tractor: John Deere 7810
• Front Loader Attacher: Hauer XB190
• Pallet Fork: albutt

Let’s go to work!

Got everything you need? Then let's get to work! Whether you start with the pasture or the coop depends on how many chickens you want to keep and if you want to breed them or not. 

Step 1: Buying the animal

Unlike the other animals, you can't transport chickens yourself. You buy them from the livestock trader or directly at the barn. If you want to breed them, you will need a rooster.

Tip! Don't fill the barn to the limit. This will save you money, and you will also receive new chickens through breeding. You can then sell them on the animal screen.

Step 2: Feeding

Chickens need wheat, sorghum or barley. You can either grow the crops yourself and feed them to the chickens, or buy a big bag of wheat at the dealership. You find the wheat in the "BigBag" category and need to transport it to the coop. You do not need to provide chickens with water.

Step 3: Keeping chickens

Whether chickens reproduce depends on three factors: Their age, the space available and their health. From the age of six months onwards, chickens are mature and can give birth to offspring. However, this is only possible if there is still room for more chickens in the barn. In addition, the health of the animals must always be 100%. You can achieve this by feeding the animals regularly.

Step 4: Selling the animals and products

You also have a choice with the chickens: either you sell the animals themselves or their eggs. You can sell the eggs to the bakery, the restaurant or the farmers market. If you have the other ingredients required, you can give the order to produce cake at the bakery if you own the shop. Cake can be sold for even more money. 

Well done!

Congratulations, you have successfully bred chickens! Take some time and start the next lesson when you are ready. And don't forget to check on your animals from time to time. Keep at it and you'll be a top-notch virtual farmer in no time with Farming Simulator Academy!