Egg — Minecraft item

Overview

Eggs are free chickens. A hen lays one every 5 to 10 minutes without any input at all, and throwing an egg has about a 1 in 8 chance of hatching a chick where it lands — occasionally four at once — which makes a chicken population self-sustaining from a single bird. That loop is the basis of the automatic chicken farm, where eggs fall through a hopper into a dispenser that throws them back into the pen, producing feathers, raw chicken and more eggs without a player present. In the kitchen they go into Pumpkin Pie and Cake, both of which are food you can mass-produce; and thrown at a mob or a player they deal no damage but do knock back and are the traditional way to be irritating on a server. Eggs stack to 16 and cannot be cooked or eaten on their own, which surprises new players. A coop of ten chickens produces more eggs than any recipe can consume. The whole system runs on birds that ask for nothing at all in return, which is why almost every base ends up with a coop somewhere behind the farm.

Hatching more chickens, baking pumpkin pie and cake, and feeding an automatic chicken farm that produces feathers, meat and eggs without supervision. Free chickens, free feathers, free pie.

Egg is a miscellaneous item in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. The stack limit is 16, so plan inventory space. Its crafting uses are Cake and Pumpkin Pie.

How to get it

Chickens lay 1 egg every 5 to 10 minutes with no food or input required. Throwing 1 has roughly a 1 in 8 chance to hatch a chick, and occasionally 4 hatch from a single throw.

Tips

Throw eggs at a wall to hatch chicks quickly when starting a coop from one or two hens.
Eggs stack to 16 and cannot be eaten; they are an ingredient and a projectile, nothing more.
A hopper under the coop floor into a dispenser makes the farm fully automatic with no player input.
Ten hens lay far more eggs than pie and cake will ever need, so keep the coop small unless you are farming feathers.