Overview
No other animal in Minecraft reproduces without your help, and that is the whole case for the Chicken. An adult lays an egg every 5 to 10 minutes with no feeding, no breeding item and no attention, and a thrown egg has a small chance of hatching 1 to 4 chicks. Point a hopper at a floor under a few hens and you have a farm that runs itself, producing eggs for cake and pumpkin pie, feathers for arrows, and raw chicken for food, forever, from four birds and a fence. The second quirk is aerodynamic: a Chicken flaps to slow its descent and takes no fall damage at all, which is why the classic cooked-chicken farm drops chicks down a shaft onto a hopper floor and kills them with lava or a trapdoor instead of the fall. It has 4 health, the least of any farm animal, so anything that gets into the pen wipes it out. Chickens follow any player holding seeds and breed on wheat seeds, beetroot seeds, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds or torchflower seeds. Baby chickens also serve as mounts for baby zombies, which is where chicken jockeys come from — rare, fast, and far more dangerous than either mob alone.
Feathers, eggs and food. Feathers make arrows, eggs make cake and pumpkin pie, and raw chicken cooks into a cheap meal, all from an animal that restocks itself without being fed.
Chickens flap to slow their fall and take no fall damage at all, so they survive drops that kill everything else. An adult lays an egg every 5 to 10 minutes, and thrown eggs have a small chance of hatching one to four chicks, which is the entire basis of automatic chicken farms. They follow any player holding seeds. Baby chickens ride adult foxes and can be spawned riding other mobs as jockeys.
In Minecraft, Chicken is classified as a passive mob. It has 4 health points, or 2 hearts. Expect 3 experience per kill.
Properties
Chicken has 4 health, which is 2 hearts. It drops up to 3 experience when a player kills it. Its hitbox is 0.4 blocks wide and 0.7 tall, which is what decides whether it fits through a gap or a one-block-high opening.
- Added in
- 1.0.0
- Breedable
- Yes
Spawns in
Spawns on grass in most warm and temperate overworld biomes, usually in groups of four.
It has no biome restriction, so anywhere in the Overworld that meets the light and space conditions is a valid spawn.
- Dimension
- Overworld
- Light level
- ≥ 9
- Added in
- 1.0.0
Dimension: Overworld · Added in 1.0.0
Drops
Killing Chicken drops Raw Chicken and Feather, plus up to 3 experience. Looting raises the maximum on most of these by one per level.
- Raw Chicken: 1
- Feather: 0–2
How it behaves
The Chicken never attacks. The only reason to be careful around one is that killing it is often not what you want: breeding it is worth more than the drop.
Killed by a player it drops up to 3 experience; killed any other way it drops none.
Command
In a world with cheats on, this spawns one Chicken where you are standing.
Summon
/summon minecraft:chicken ~ ~ ~Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How often do chickens lay eggs?
Every 5 to 10 minutes per adult, with no feeding required. It is the only passive mob that produces an item unprompted.
Do chickens take fall damage?
No. They flap to slow their fall and survive drops of any height, which is what chicken farm designs are built around.
What do you feed chickens?
Wheat seeds, beetroot seeds, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds or torchflower seeds — any of them will breed or lead them.
How much health does a Chicken have?
4 health, two hearts, the lowest of any farm animal. See animal breeding and food production.
How much health does the Chicken have in Minecraft?
The Chicken has 4 health points, which is 2 hearts.
What does the Chicken drop?
It drops Raw Chicken and Feather, plus 3 experience when killed by a player.
Where does the Chicken spawn?
Spawns on grass in most warm and temperate overworld biomes, usually in groups of four.
Related pages
How to get it
Chickens spawn in groups of 4 on grass at light level 9 or above in most warm and temperate biomes. Breed them with any seed type, or throw eggs — each has roughly a 1 in 8 chance of hatching a chick.
Tips
- Build the pen with a hopper floor: eggs are laid where the hen stands and collect themselves with no redstone.
- Throw eggs in stacks rather than one at a time; roughly one egg in eight hatches, occasionally four chicks at once.
- Use a drop of any height to move chicks — a Chicken takes zero fall damage, so the fall alone will never kill it.
- Cook the meat: raw chicken carries a 30% chance of Food Poisoning, and cooked chicken carries none.