Oh wow, thanks for the photopea link!! Gonna try that out!
Okay, tips for players (then chicken facts when I have another minute)!
* Anything you can move to the conveyor belt can be sold -- boxes, feed, half-eaten feed, grape stems, eggs, eggshells, hens, and chicks. Keep your yard and incubator clutter-free to see all your chickens better. :) The low-value items are just one buck apiece, but every little bit's nice.
* Lots and lots of items can fit in a full box, and the hens can't eat items that aren't on the grass. If you have two boxes of corn, move all the corn to one box and sell the other box. I put chick feed box behind the incubator and a corn box at the bottom of the incubator, for easy access, and filled them with several boxes worth of food.
* However, make sure to put things in the TOP of the box where they're visible, not inside out of sight. If you can't see them, there's no way to get them back.
* Don't place an item on the notice board! I had that happen and trying to retrieve it just opened the notices. XD
* Otherwise, if an item is placed where it's not supposed to be, like a single ear of corn on the platform or behind the incubator, it will have a red X on it, but you can retrieve it at any time and it will be fine. If you don't like to see a lot of red Xs, leave eggs anywhere in the yard or on the platform, hens in the incubator or on a nest, and feed boxes on the platform, in the yard, or behind/in front of the incubator. If you don't mind the Xs, you can skip refilling boxes and just stack huge piles of food items somewhere "wrong" where the chickens can't get them.
* Boxes are really useful for eggshells. Put all your eggshells in a box! Drag one thing from the incubator to the conveyor belt instead of a hundred of 'em!
* If you sell a hen you needed for a collect-hens-of-all-types goal, don't worry; eggs for each breed unlock in the Order book as soon as that hen is received, and you can buy and hatch another one.
Egg production and nest management!
* There's a lot of competition for those three nests. To avoid broken eggs without breaking the bank on grapefruit, I've found I can comfortably manage about four or five active chickens at a time. I put any other hens in the incubator, where they fall asleep! (They also sleep when they're in the nests or after they've laid an egg on the ground, and they fall asleep if you put them anywhere they're marked with an X as not supposed to be there; if they're asleep, you can let them snooze and concentrate on the others.) * The hens will not lay until they've eaten. If you want to take that awesome pic of ALL your many, many chickens running around at once without risking broken eggs, move them to the incubator right after they've laid an egg, remove any food from the yard, and then wake them all up. (Edit: I thought their food bar didn't go down, but it does, very slowly! If you have a bunch of chickens asleep somewhere, keep an eye on their nutrition. The lower it goes, the more corn it takes to get it back up again. In light of this, I'll probably reevaluate my program of keeping more hens than I have laying at any one time, except if I'm doing something fun with them.)
* Keep an eye on each hen's broody meter (the pink status bar). If there's even a little pink, get that bird in a nest! The broody meter will continue to climb, the egg will be laid, and you won't be frantically trying to grab a hen from behind all the other hens at the last minute.
* Don't worry if there's no time to remove an egg from a nest before moving the next hen in. Just move the previous hen out. They won't lay in a nest while another hen's still there, but they will lay there even if other hens have left eggs behind.
Goal management and raising chicks!
* The Notice Board shows only three goals at once. Things done before a goal appears on the board don't count toward the goal when it does appear. For example, any eggs sold before the selling-10-eggs goal don't count and you have to sell more in total to get to the goal. To save time, try not to sell or hatch each egg right after weighing it unless you need the money for corn. Collect infertile eggs in one pile and eggs with chicks in another pile, and start selling/hatching when there's a goal for doing that. * Hens only count toward the collect-all-ten-breeds goal when they're in the yard. If your only examples of some breeds are asleep in the incubator or somewhere they shouldn't be, move them back to the yard and then they'll count.
* Eggs are often infertile when the game begins. To get a fertile egg almost every time, use grapes.
* Hens can lay a fertile egg after eating one grape (when their red combs turn purple), but they will happily eat up several grapes at once. Same with grapefruit; only one bite is needed to change comb color, but the hens will try to eat more. Let each hen eat one bite, then move her away (you may have to keep doing this; they are persistent!) or to a sleep area. If all active hens have tried the item, move it back to the box where they can't get at it. Grapes and grapefruit are expensive and they last longer this way.
* If a hen's food meter was already high before eating fruit, only a bite or two might give them enough nutrition to go broody! If a sleeping hen's food meter is near full, keep an eye on the broody meter so you can move her to the nest in time.
* If you build up a pile of fertile eggs, you can incubate them all at once and hatch SO MANY CHICKS. :) However, they grow up more slowly this way because they distract each other and get to the food more slowly. Once they have eaten some chick feed, they grow into hens and doze until you take them out of the incubator. The ones who haven't had enough feed wait till you have more, and you can move in extra hens from the yard too. It can get really festive in there. ;)
* You know where else hens can sleep? IN A BOX. Omg so cute.
* I haven't specifically checked, but my impression is that selling adult hens makes more money than selling eggs. Once you have a routine of rotating a few hens in and out of the nests and stretching out your grape supply so each cluster is good for more fertile eggs, you'll be making more than you spend, and then it's just a matter of saving up for any orders you want.
I'll leave a pic of my chicken yard and come back later with chicken facts.
(Edited several hours later to reflect what I learned from some hatch-lots-of-eggs and hens-in-a-box experiments!)
(one final edit: hahaha, I finally looked in the comments and saw everyone else figured out all the sleeping-chickens and box tricks, yay!)
Here's the yard when my last chicken had just arrived! (I stacked infertile eggs on the left and fertile ones on the right, and left off accessories to show things more clearly.)
For my next trick, I'm saving up to fill the yard with grapefruit, release an inordinately large number of hens into it, and just wait.<3
ok here's some CHICKEN FACTS
they are so. so. smart. they stand out from all domestic poultry -- they WILL experiment until they find every edible material and every possible way to escape from their area. they understand delayed gratification and can be taught all kinds of tricks; clicker training works well with them. they can tell colors apart and learn to pick a color or shape out for a reward, they figure out how to get food out of small spaces or find it in covered dishes, they create complex social systems among themselves and YOU TOO can be a part of that if you respond with the right body language cues. they have a bunch of different calls for different purposes (btw the cluck, cheep, and cackle sounds you picked for the game are PERFECT)
they've been bred by humans for thousands of years and their shapes and patterns and physiology are wild! roosters are usually more flashy, but look up "penciled," "laced," and "mille fleur" for some gorgeous feather patterns. many breeds come in a bunch of different colors; white, red, buff, chestnut, brown, silver, and lavender are some of them, and that's not counting the color combinations. regular backyard chickens are commonly from breeds selectively bred for eggs, meat, or both, but there's a wacky show chicken breed for every budget. Leghorns became common industrially because they lay a large egg for their size. Cochins and Brahmas are super gentle and the hens are amazing brooders and mothers. if introduced in the right way, they'll even adopt the young of other poultry and raise them as their own. Silkies are so, so soft and sweet but don't let them get rained on, they're TOO FLUFFY! Polish and Polish Crested have those floofy bowlcuts and sometimes need a trim so they can see through their feathers! Ayam Cemani is an incredibly expensive specialty breed that is entirely black right down to the bone. Russian Orloffs, Easter Eggers, and Aracaunas have fluffy beards under their beaks. (Easter Eggers are one of the breeds that lay blue or green eggs!) There are so many cool chickens.
and they all have personalities. while generalizations can be made for individual breeds (Hambergs are cheerful and flighty, Leghorns are more standoffish but can deal with living in a smaller area, Minorcas are friendly and easily handled, Orpingtons are gentle, patient, and cuddly, Faverolles are dignified and nonconfrontational, etc), each individual chicken has its own set of traits and its own individual relationship with each other chicken. some will fight for the top perch, favored nest, or first pick of the food; some like and dislike different foods; some want to know what's going on at all times, while others ignore everything except predator alerts; some just have inexplicable Attitudes toward each other and refuse to associate; they can be more or less vocal; they forage, poke around, shake out their feathers, stretch one wing and one leg at the same time, dustbathe, sunbathe, hop on your lap for a snooze instead if you've socialized them to, raid your garden without remorse, and go about their chickeny business with such panache!!
speaking of vocals, they have sounds for "everyone hold still," "everyone run and hide," "I'm saving this nice bit of food for you," "what is that, I am SUSPICIOUS," "don't touch me I'm nesting," "I HAVE JUST LAID AN EGG, SOUND OFF EVERYONE" and so much more. when not in the shrubbery where they may be out of sight, they communicate a whole bunch of stuff through body language, from reinforcing hierarchies to grooming each others' feathers. common nonvocal interactions humans may notice include:
-"are you eating that?" "I didn't want it anyway"/"YES"
-"I'm testing our boundaries" "back off or get a warning peck"/"I didn't want to be standing here anyway"/okay I'm leaving but I'm taking this tasty thing WITH ME"
-"you have been using that nice dustbathing hole for a long time, you know" "why yes I have, go find your own"/"whatever, I don't care"/"you can use it too, c'mon in"
-"oh too bad you picked that nest, I want it, find another one" "but I spent an hour getting it just the way I like it!!" "NO, MINE, SCRAM"
-"oh too bad you picked that nest, I waited till I'm about to pop and now I'm just gonna stroll in and lay this egg like you aren't even there and leave two minutes later, how do you like that" "barbara WHY, you're messing with my zen thing here!"
-"I touched the thing first, it's mine now" "NO COME BACK HERE"
-"WHAT WAS TH-- oh it's just susan run-flapping exuberantly across the yard, do they HAVE to, false alarm everyone quiet down" "look sometimes you just feel right and you GOTTA, no fears no regrets"
-"hey you have a bug on your comb." "oh I wondered what that was, you can have it, I'll hold still."
-"oh. here we are in a standoff. i'm sure this was an accident on your part, you'll back off first now, won't you?" "how strange, I was about to say the same thing to you" "okay but seriously now if you keep this up I'm going to feel disrespected and you will find that painful" "I can handle a bit of pain but are you feeling lucky today"
-"break it up, you two, no one wants to deal with this whole thing you have going on, now move along or catch THIS BEAK, good, I thought that's what you'd say, no harm no alarm"
-"oh hey it's the human DID YOU BRING US ANYTHING????"
and this goes on all day!
there's plenty more where that came from but I have to sleep; tl;dr omg chickens.<3
