Chickens are the easiest animal to raise on your farm. They're also the least expensive to manage!
To fill your barn with chickens you'll only need to buy 1 adult. After that the eggs she lays can be
hatched into new chickens. You can buy your first chicken from Lila's pountry farm for 1,500 G.
The chicken barn is located in the southwest corner of your farm, next to your grain mill. The chicken barn can hold 4 chickens, but if you have it upgraded by Gotz then you can have a total of 8 chickens. Each barn version also has a nest where you can place eggs to hatch into new chickens. An egg takes 3 days of nesting before it will hatch into a chick. A week later and the chick will grow into an adult chicken.
Chicks don't need to be fed, but adult chickens need food every day. If you leave your chickens inside their barn, there's a food supply available for you to the left of their feeding box. Just take the chicken feed out of the bin and put it in their boxes. Each adult chicken will need a box full of food. You can get feed from Lila's poultry farm (10 G each) or you can make your own with the Corn you grow in the Summer season. Just take your Corn and throw it into the grain mill. Each ear of Corn will make 30 pieces of chicken feed.
If you keep your chickens outside though, you won't need to feed them at all! You won't even need to have any grass growing in your pastures for the chickens. One disadvantage to leaving them outside is they may get scared by the wild dogs that occasionally come to your farm at 8pm. The other is they'll lay their eggs all over your farmyard and you willl have to run around picking them up. To organize your outdoor chickens, place them in a fenced-in area on your farm. The wild dog can't get to the chickens and the eggs won't be all over the place.
| Chicken Products | ||
|---|---|---|
Small Egg | 50 G | 0 - 3 hearts |
 Medium Egg | 60 G | 4 - 7 hearts |
Large Egg | 80 G | 8 - 10 hearts |
 Gold Egg | 100 G | Win the Chicken Sumo festival + 8-10 Hearts |
P Egg | 180 G | Win Chicken Sumo + 8-10 Hearts + 600 hours of outdoor time |
 X Egg | 350 G | Rare egg from P Egg laying chicken |
Spa Egg | 80 G | Take any egg and throw it into the Hot Springs |
When you go into your barn (or around your farmyard) to collect eggs, they will all look the same from the ground. After you pick up the egg you can see what kind it is. Then you can ship it to Zack by tossing the egg into your shipping bin. If you want a little more money from your Small Eggs, take them to the Hot Springs on Mother's Hill. You can throw the eggs into the water from the gap in the rocks on the backside of the spa. Spa Eggs will ship for 30 G more then the Small Eggs.
Besides normal eggs, you can "upgrade" your chicken to lay Gold, P, and X eggs. All you have to do is enter
your girl into the Chicken Sumo festival and win all 3 rounds. After
you win, your chicken will start laying Gold Eggs the next day if she has 8 or more hearts. There is a chance your chicken won't lay
Gold Eggs and start laying P Eggs instead. The requirements for a chicken to produce P Eggs is to leave
it outside for a total of 600 hours (25 days), so if you win the festival with a chicken you've left outside
for a long time it will upgrade past the Gold level and go directly to P level. While the P Eggs sell for
more then the Gold Eggs, missing the golden chicken means you can't give any Gold Eggs to Won (his favorite!).
You also won't be able to ship a Gold Egg to Zack to complete your shippable items list, which is a requirement
needed to marry the Goddess. If you want a Gold producing chicken you're going to have to leave it inside the
barn and try again at the festival the next year.
When a chicken is laying P Eggs, there's rare (very rare) chance that it will lay an X Egg. You may only get one or two X Eggs throughout a chicken's lifetime. Chickens will die of old age and a normal life expectancy is between 3 and 4 years. The only way you can really "cheat death" is to save your game before you go to bed that night. The Animal Funeral event aways occurs the next morning so if you see the funeral, reload your game from the previous night. There's a good chance your chicken will live to see the next morning.
To make a chicken happy and raise it's love level, just pick it up and put it back down. The chickens will lay eggs every day except for when they're sick or unhappy. An unhappy chicken will have a "..." bubble above it's head when you pick it up and put it back down. A sick chicken will have a skull and crossbones icon in it's bubble. To cure a sick chicken, buy some animal medicine from Lila's or Barley's ranch. The animal medicine is used to cure all of your animals so it's not necessary to buy special medicine for the chickens. If you don't heal a sick chicken then it will eventually die. I've even had a chicken who died the next day after being sick, so try to heal her as quickly as you can.
