In The Sims 4 Cottage Living, life revolves around the slow-paced countryside lifestyle. You can grow your own crops, take care of farm animals, and breed chickens.
Well, if you want to learn more about chickens, keep on reading this guide. I’ll try to answer all of the questions that you may have about chickens.
Everything you need to know about chickens in Sims 4 Cottage Living
Buy some chicken coops and build a fence
A chicken coop is one of the first investments you should make when you start building your farm. They’re an important source of income, especially at the beginning.
To raise and breed chickens, first, you need to buy a Chicken Coop from Build/Buy. Alternatively, you can also purchase a lot that has a Chicken Coop on it.
Place the coop on your lot, and then click on it to purchase chicks, hens, and roosters. You can buy white, brown, and black chickens. You can house up to 8 chickens per coop and place as many coops as you want on your farm.
The cost per chicken varies between 75 to 200 Simoleons.
Chickens return to their coop for the night at 6 PM on their own. They come back out in the morning at 6 AM.
By the way, make sure to place a fence around your coops and then lock the gate to prevent chickens from wandering around. Chickens can wander off and your Sim will have a hard time getting them back to their coops.
If you have The Sims 4 Seasons installed, rest assured, your chickens won’t be affected by severe weather conditions. But to stay on the safe side, call them over when it’s raining or snowing heavily.
Eggs can spoil in your inventory
As your hens start laying eggs, you can either place the eggs in your inventory or leave them in the coop to hatch. Keep in mind that you need to have at least one rooster per coop to get hatchable eggs.
However, not every egg your hens lay will be hatchable. Use unhatchable eggs for cooking. The good news is that chickens lay eggs every day.
However, if you keep the eggs in your inventory for too long, they’ll spoil. To prevent that from happening, place them in the fridge.
Unfortunately, your fridge may sometimes break and become unusable. Repair it quickly or get a new one to fix the problem.
How to keep your chickens happy
Egg quality depends on the happiness level of your chickens. There are four elements that you can use to measure their happiness level: Happiness, Hygiene, Hunger, and Attention.
Hover your cursor over the chickens to check how happy they are. Make sure to keep these four indicators in the green. Socialize with your chickens to keep them happy.
You can name each chicken individually. They have their own individual needs and relationship with your Sim. You can also buy animal clothing to dress your chickens up and build your relationship with them.
If your chickens become too unhappy, they’ll run away. So, do make sure to take good care of them.
Clean your chicken coops regularly
Hover over your coop with your cursor to check its status. If it’s dirty, clean it right away to make sure your chickens remain happy and healthy.
Cleaning out the chicken coops sometimes results in getting different fertilizers that you can then use to grow your crops. By the way, discuss preening with your chickens as well to incentivize them to clean themselves.
To scatter chicken feed around, click on the coop and select the Feed option. Do this every day to keep your chickens well-fed.
Upgrade your coops for less maintenance with the help of Livestock Upgrade Parts. Sims can obtain Livestock Upgrade Parts by running errands for the NPCs.
Install a coop auto-feeder, and get a ComfortCare Life Extender to help your chickens feel more relaxed. Don’t forget about the fox alarm to keep foxes at bay.
If you notice your chickens are afraid all the time, install a Fox-Be-Gone alarm as quickly as possible. Most likely, wild foxes are lurking around, waiting to steal your eggs.
Another great idea is to place a llama shed near your coops. Llamas will spit on the fox that is trying to steal your eggs.
Chickens can kill you
If you use too many negative interactions with your chickens, they’ll get so angry they’ll peck your eyes out. You read that right, chickens can kill you.
That’s another important reason why you should do your best to keep them happy all the time. Happy chickens that have a high relationship with your Sim are less likely to attack.
Meet Charles, the Evil Chicken
If you give your chickens a Midnight Treat, they’ll turn into Evil Chickens. If you get an Obsidian egg, that egg can hatch an evil chick. By the way, if your Sims eat recipes that contain Obsidian eggs, they’ll turn into Evil Sims and set things on fire just by looking at them.
Evil Chickens are more likely to lay Obsidian Eggs. The coolest thing is that you can ask your Evil Chicken for help, and they’ll attack Grimmy or Vlad if they’re around.
Golden chickens can make you a lot of money
Golden chickens are extremely helpful. They lay golden eggs most of the time, and you can sell each egg for around 300 Simoleons. The quickest way to get a hatchable golden egg is to buy it from the stalls in Finchwick.
Or you can feed your hens Golden Treats to create Golden Chickens.
Golden Chicken can help you increase the quality of all the eggs laid in your coop.
That’s a pretty cool feature, isn’t it?
By the way, if your chickens won’t eat Golden Treats, socialize with them first using Friendly interactions.
Trade your chickens for money and rewards
If you need some extra Simoleons, or you’ve got too many animals to take care of, you can downsize the number of chickens you have. You can trade your feathered friends for meat, money, and other rewards, such as animal treats, and cooking ingredients.
What kind of treats can I give to my chickens?
- Animal Party Treat makes your chickens extremely happy when you socialize with them.
- Chocolatey Treat helps your hens lay a chocolate egg.
- Fishy Protein Treat gives you one extra egg.
- Flirty Treat use this treat to increase the chances of getting Hatchable Eggs.
- Friendly Treat increases your relationship with your feathered friend.
- Fruity Treat produces blue eggs.
- Golden Treat turns regular chickens into Golden Chickens. The effect is permanent.
- Healthy Treat extends your chickens’ lifespan.
- Midnight Treat turns your chicken into an Evil Chicken.
- Pumpkin Treat produces orange eggs.
- Rainbow Treat helps your hen lay Rainbow eggs.
- Spicy Treat will produce obsidian eggs.
- Veggie Treat produces green eggs.
Show off your chickens and eggs at the Finchwick Fair
Breed the perfect hen or rooster, produce the biggest egg, and show them off at the fair. You can earn prizes for your results. By the way, the mayor will be the judge of that.
Chickens will age and die
Chickens have a limited lifespan and live for around 20 days. They’ll eventually die of old age, and their souls will be reaped by the Grim Reaper.
Chickens have 4 distinct life stages: chick, young adult, adult, and elder. The good news is that you can give them a special treat (Healthy Treat) to extend their lifespan.
If you want to prevent your chickens from dying, you can simply disable animal aging in the Game Options.
Got other interesting chicken-related tips you’d like to share with us? Hit the comments below.
Happy Simming!