Chicken Coop

Chicken Coop
(Building)
Location
Small Construction Site
Requirements
Avian Selection
Cost to Build Boards 50 Bricks 600 Cut Stone 15 Dried Flax 60

Source

This building becomes available after you have learned the Avian Selection tech.

Hens and Roosters are caught by examining Pale Pampas Grass and Dark Pampas Grass. Can find either in both types (new for T9).

Cost

Must be built from a Small Construction Site, on grass.

• 50 Boards ?

• 600 Bricks ?

• 15 Cut Stone ?

• 60 Dried Flax ?

Ecology

Chicken Coops, like other animal pens, cause Nitrogen pollution which prevents flax and vegetables from growing. Chicken coops produce considerably more than other animal pens, so are more likely to cause any newly-arising inability to grow issues. The range on this pollution is render distance - if you can see the chicken coop, you will likely be experiencing some degree of Nitrogen pollution.

Use

Chicken Coops house Hens and Roosters, which will produce Eggs here. Only hens are needed to produce eggs.

When an egg hatches into a chicken, it leaves behind a Crushed Eggshell in the coop. A chicken in a coop can be slaughtered to yield Chicken Meat and Animal Bones

Chickens eat Barley and Insects too.

If you have Insects in your inventory, there is an option to convert Insects into Feed. Select which insects you want to convert. Feed goes directly into the coop. 7 Feed are produced per deben of Insect added, regardless of type of insect.

Remove any barley if you want to feed only insects; the birds will eat barley first.

From T3:

• Hens eat about 5 Barley/Chicken Feed each per game day.
  • You can keep 20 Hens in a coop.
  • Hens produce 1 egg each per game day.
• Roosters eat abut 20 Barley/Chicken Feed each per game day.
• Eggs hatch 1 Hen (95%) or 1 Rooster (5%) per game day.
  • You can put up to 100 eggs in a coop, but only 20 of them will hatch.
  • If a rooster hatches, you will only get Roosters that day, and usually just one Rooster.

Slats (copied from T3)

The temperature inside a coop changes from hour to hour, depending largely on the Egyptian day/night cycle. As chickens thrive best within a certain temperature range, proper maintenance is an important part of raising poultry. Your tool for regulating temperature is opening and closing the ventilation slats in the coop. Slats can be fully open, mostly open, half open, slightly open, or closed.

• When the slats are open, the coop gets hotter during the day and cooler at night.
• When the slats are closed, the coop cools off during the day and stays warmer at night.

An additional factor to account for is that some days are warmer than others.

Chicken Coop Temperature Control

This page describes the optimum temperatures, obtained by adjusting the Chicken Coop Slats, for obtaining Eggs and hatching Hens and Roosters. Stated briefly, each coop changes it's behavior once every 24 hours, at exactly midnight, and the user needs to adjust the ambient air slats to counteract the 24 hour driver.

This page discusses techniques for achieving a Chicken Coop temperature, at 6:00 AM each morning, that is the most conducive to:

• Hens laying Eggs (Warm at 6:10 AM)
• Eggs hatching to Roosters (Speculation - Warm at 6:10 AM, but only %5 probability)
• Eggs hatching to Hens (Speculation - Warm at 6:10 AM)

The Hens will lay eggs and (speculation the eggs will hatch) at any temperature, but your odds are better when the temperature is between 60 and 100 degrees. The temperature during the remainder of the 24 hour period is unimportant, except that you can't let the temperature get so far from nominal that you can't pull it back into the target range by 6:00 AM.

Hens will continue to lay eggs if Barley/Chicken Feed is available and the temperature is comfortable. Roosters are used to feed Snakes, and may have some impact on the amount of Eggs that hatch per day in a pen that also contains Hens. Theory was, one rooster = one egg can hatch despite Hens existing.

• Note from Solaris: After a bit of messing around I have found that hens lay eggs at temperatures around 100, and eggs hatch at temperatures somewhere around 60–80. Closer study is needed to get the exact temperature ranges.

Hens will only lay, and eggs will only hatch, if some hens or some eggs have been in the coop for more than 24 hours. If you're short on Barley, you can add Hens at 5:30 AM and remove them again at 6:30 AM, to conserve Barley. Other than temperature, the program only checks the coops once per game day.

If the reported temperatures are not in the 60-100 degree range at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, you'll need to reset the slats. The thermometer is capped/bottomed at 120/20 degrees, but the Chicken Coop still knows how hot/cold it really is, and the probabilities are based on the real temperatures.

If your Chicken Coops have stalled, it's because the temperatures have gotten so high or so low that you're repeatedly falling outside of the optimum temperature band at 6:00 AM.

Chicken Coop Characteristics

• The temperature of the outside ambient air varies sinusoidally. It is useful to think of the sun as heating up the outside ambient air. The greater the difference between the current coop temperature and the hypothetical ambient air temperature for that time of day, the greater the influence of the slat settings.
  • The ambient air temperature is 20 degrees at 6:00 AM
  • The ambient air temperature is 120 degrees at 6:00 PM.
  • The dotted line on the graph indicates the ambient temperature.

• The user can influence the Chicken Coop temperature by setting the slats to control the amount of ambient air that's admitted.
  • Fully Open Slats allow the ambient air to have full influence.
  • Mostly Open Slats allow the ambient air to have 50% influence.
  • Half Open Slats remove ambient air from consideration.
  • Slightly Open Slats have the opposite effect of mostly open slats, who knows how.
  • Closed Slats have the opposite effect of fully open slats, who knows how.
  • Note that you will have to reverse the slats at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM to maintain a consistent effect.

• Each Chicken Coop has its own game controlled air conditioning unit that changes at exactly gameday midnight.
  • Hot for this time of day will drive the temperature up for the next 24 hours, but more slowly than fully open/closed slats.
  • Warm for this time of day will drive the temperature up for the next 24 hours, but more slowly than mostly open/slightly closed slats.
  • There is no neutral mode. You should be so lucky.
  • Cool for this time of day is the inverse of Warm.
  • Quite Cool for this time of day is the inverse of Hot.

Coop Conditions

Chicken Coop conditions change every six hours

• Temperatures are calculated once every 15 game minutes, and individual Coops are not synchronized.
  • The sun rises at exactly 6:00 AM, and the effect of ambient air switches to warming mode.
    • The temperature is capped at 120 degrees.
    • The temperature doesn't reset to 120 degrees, if you're running hot, you'll stay at 120 degrees for longer.
  • The sun sets at exactly 6:00 PM, and the effect of ambient air switches to cooling mode.
    • The temperature is bottomed at 20 degrees.
    • The temperature doesn't reset to 20 degrees, if you're cold, you're running cold, you'll stay at 20 degrees for longer.
  • The profile is vaguely sinusoidal.

• Midnight is the critical adjustment time, as that's when the time of day driver changes.
• Sunrise at 6:00 AM causes the effect of ambient air, and therefore the appropriate slat position, to reverse.
• Eggs are laid and hatched at 6:10 AM.
• Sunset at 6:00 PM causes the effect of ambient air, and therefore the appropriate slat position, to reverse.

Factors

The game controlled driver and the user controlled slats are additive

• We've been monitoring 5 chicken coops, in adjacent locations, and have never seen mixed hot/cool drivers. They seem to be a mix of Quite Cool/Cool or else Warm/Hot. We haven't explored whether coops throughout Egypt behave this way.
• The 24 hour driver seems to be a constant.
• The effect of the slats depends on the temperature of the ambient air or, more specifically, the temperature differential.
  • If you are close to the ambient temperature, the 24 hour driver will act as an offset.
    • This condition usually exists around noon and midnight, when the ambient air temperature is always 70 degrees.
  • If you are way off of the ambient temperature, the slat settings will dominate.
    • This condition usually exists at 6:00 AM when the ambient air temperature is always 20 degrees.
    • This condition usually exists at 6:00 PM when the ambient air temperature is always 120 degrees.
  • There will be a definite knee at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM if you don't reverse the slat settings.
• The 24 hour driver and the Slat settings are additive but bounded at a Fully Open or Closed rate of change.
  • You can't go up any faster than Hot or Fully Open/Closed during the Day/Night.
  • Warm plus Mostly Open/Slightly Open during the Day/Night is the same as Hot.
  • Warm/Slightly cool plus Slightly Open/Mostly Open during the Day/Night cancel each other.
  • Cool plus Slightly Open/Mostly Open during the Day/Night is the same at Quite Cool.
  • You can't go down any faster Quite Cool or Closed/Fully Open during the Day/Night.

General Slat Setting

Half Open Slats

The following temperature profile was provided by a set of five adjacent Chicken Coops

The movement of these temperature is due entirely to the 24 hour driver. The user controlled flaps were set at neutral, or half open for this test.

The Balanced Approach

The optimum strategy is to check your Chicken Coops three times per day.

• Shortly after midnight, to respond to the new 24 hour drivers.
• Just before 6:10 AM to reverse the slat setting. If you switch production modes between all hens or all eggs, you'll lose the next 24 hours of production. There's a 24-hour waiting period when you reconfigure a coop.
• Just after 6:10 AM to collect the Eggs and/or Hens and to add Barley.
  • You can actually collect them anytime during the next 24 hours, but you'll be too curious to wait.
  • If you have both hens and eggs in a coop, production will stall unless you also have a rooster.
  • If there's no Barley, the Chickens will leave.
  • When eggs hatch you'll also get eggshells. You can leave them in the coop or gather them. It doesn't effect production.
• Noon doesn't matter, unless your coops have been running cold, and you want to yank the temperatures up a ways.
• Around 6:00 PM to reverse the slat settings.

At 6:00 PM we reversed the slats so that they would continue to balance (oppose) the current 24 hour driver.

We weren't around at midnight when the 24 hour drivers randomly switched from Cold to Hot. Consequently, the temperature zoomed, but we knew we had plenty of wiggle room.

The new hens in coop #T1 were still on a 24-hour production hold, but all of the eligible coops produced eggs.