Raising Chickens

They produce eggs, meat and down (chicken feathers).

• Male chickens are called roosters
• Female chickens are hens
• Young chickens are chicks
• Chickens weigh about 5 lbs each
• The average chicken can live for about 3-4 years. Some rare chickens have been known to have lived for as long as 25 years!

Unlike grazing animals, chickens must be consistently feed and watered. Getting water is not much of an issue worth considering. Food however is. Wheat, Barley, Alfalfa and Corn make adequate feeds for chickens. Each chicken requires 1/20th of a pound of grain daily. Most grains weight about 40 lbs per unit. There are 28 day a month, therefore figure that each chicken you have will consume 1/25 a unit of feed per month. ( only worry about feeding roosters and hens, what chicks scavenge I've already included in the ratio)

• 1 unit of food per month per 25 Chickens (hens and roosters, don't count chicks)
• Chickens eat Wheat, Barley, Alfalfa and Corn.
• Chickens must be feed 12 months a year because they do not graze.

Chickens do not particularly like to huddle together like many other produce animals do. Unlike sheep and cattle, chickens are naturally temperamental to each other and will try to distance themselves as much a possible. This means your going to have to build an structure of sorts to keep them from getting away and keeping them safe. Consult the building rules to fabricate a structure. At least 1 square foot of floor space is needed for every 5 chickens to be housed there. This seems like it will pack them in pretty tight, but simple makeshift shelves along the interior walls at a couple different heights makes for a lot more room to spread out over. For many domesticated animals a barn for winter is a good idea to protect them from cold. For chickens, a good coop is absolutely vital to prevent massive predation and a huge mortality rate.

• A secure building of any sort with at least 1 square foot of floor space for every 5 chickens.

Chickens are very easy animals to tend. They need to be watered, feed, cleaned up after and have their eggs managed and sorted. Tending to chickens may be done by farmers or with general unskilled labor. A Farmer can tend up to 200 chickens for every FLU (Farmer Labor Unit) dedicated to tending your flock. An unskilled laborer can tend to 1 chicken for every 2 GLUs (general Labor Unit) devoted to the job.

• Farmers can manage 200 chickens per FLU.
• Unskilled laborers can manage 1 chicken per 2 GLUs.

Chickens have a natural life expectancy of 3.5 years. This means the expected monthly mortality rate for Hens and Roosters is 2.5%, or 1 in 40.

• 1 in 40 Chickens die each month

First we must realize that Hens will lay about 150 eggs per year. They lay them if they have been impregnated by a rooster or not. Eggs laid by an impregnated Hen are not commonly eaten and eventually hatch into chicks. Those laid by a Hen who has not been impregnated are good for little else but eating. If your managing a chicken farm, you can do a pretty good job of deciding how many of your hens do each. When keeping chickens, you will have to indicate how the hens will be allocated in terms of reproduction or food egg production.

Reproductive egg laying

To reproduce your chickens, you'll need 1 rooster for every 15 hens. From that, you can expect each Hen to lay about 12.5 fertilized eggs per month. Chickens have a very high mortality rate of about 65% and they mature at 18 weeks of age. Therefore you can expect that about 5 chicks will be born each month that will make it to maturity some 4 months later.

• At least 1 rooster per 15 hens.
• 5 viable chicks will be born per reproducing hen per month.
• Each month 1 in 5 of your chicks will mature into hens and roosters (50% each).

Produce eggs for food

To produce eggs for human consumption, you must keep separate hens away from roosters. These hens will not produce chicks. An average hen will lay about 15 eggs a month. Because we say that a unit of food is 1 cubic ft, we are going to estimate and say about 500 eggs makes up a unit, and therefore you get one unit of eggs for consumption per month for every 30 hens you have producing them.

• 1 unit of eggs per 30 hens

Butchering chickens can be done by anybody, and even butchers are not particularly more efficient at it. The time and effort required to butcher chickens is included in the time and effort spent tending them. For each adult chicken ( rooster or hen) you slaughter, you obtain about 3 lbs of meat and 1/2 lbs of down. Because we use units as a standard measure in this game, and a unit of meat weighs 45 lbs, each butchered chicken produces 1/15 a unit of meat. Because hens produce eggs for eating and procreation, roosters are most often butchered for meat. Remember to keep at least one rooster alive for every 15 hens you want to keep reproducing.Chicken feathers weigh about 15 pounds per cubic ft, therefore every 30 chickens butchered produces one unit of down.

• Butchering 15 chickens produced 1 unit of meat.
• 1 unit of down is produced for every 30 chickens butchered.