[Animals 101] How To Breed & Care For Chickens

Welcome to your next "Animals 101" lesson of the Farming Simulator Academy! Today, we're focusing on chickens. Chickens are easy to care for and a good choice if you're just getting started with animal husbandry. We'll show you how to take care of your new feathered friends!

What Is Special About Chickens?

There are two types of chickens: chickens and roosters.

Housing Options

You can choose between several chicken husbandries. As shown above, they differ mainly in price, size, and animal capacity.

Feeding Options

Chickens are easy to feed. You can either use:

• Wheat
• Barley
• Sorghum
• Chicken feed bought from the dealership

You can grow the grain yourself or buy ready-to-use feed. Buying feed is an easy way to get started if you are not growing suitable crops yet. Also: Chickens do not be provided with water.

Want to produce your own feed? See our Academy tutorials for wheat, barley, and sorghum.

Breeding Chickens

If you want your chickens to reproduce, make sure the following requirements are met:

• The chickens are at least 6 months old.
• Their health is at 100%.
• There is free capacity in the housing for offspring.

Keep your chickens supplied with feed to maintain their health. New chickens are added automatically once the breeding requirements are met.

What You Need For Chickens

You don't need much to start keeping chickens.

Basic equipment:

• Tractor with a front loader and pallet fork: Used for handling the egg pallets.

Let’s Get To Work!

Step 1: Buy the animals

You can buy chickens from the livestock trader or directly at the husbandry. Unlike most other animals, you cannot transport chickens yourself.

Tip! Don't fill your housing to maximum capacity if you want to breed chickens. Leave some room for offspring instead.

Step 2: Add feed

Deliver one of the available feed types to the husbandry and keep enough feed available to maintain the animals' health.

Step 3: Sell eggs and chickens

If you are breeding your chickens, offspring are added automatically when the breeding requirements are met. You can sell surplus animals through the animal menu. Eggs appear on pallets at the husbandry. Load the pallets with suitable equipment and transport them to a selling point. Alternatively, you can deliver eggs to a production facility that uses them as an ingredient.

Processing Eggs: Products

You can sell eggs directly or process them further through production chains. If you own a suitable production facility and provide the other required ingredients, eggs can be used to create products such as cake.

Tip! Processing eggs requires more work and may require additional ingredients. In return, finished products can be more valuable than selling eggs directly.

Well Done!

Congratulations! You now know the basics of keeping chickens in Farming Simulator. When you're ready, continue with the next Farming Simulator Academy lesson!