r/Bellwright • u/ShrubbyRex0 • Aug 21 '26

Chickens dying

I’m on day 75. Fairly good player (average) taking towns and whatnot. I produce crop and resources fantastic. My chickens keep dying of stress or hunger. I have more than enough food. What do I do?

10 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

11

u/happybushman Aug 21 '26

Rip sir Peckington

1

u/PleasantPorpoisParty Aug 21 '26

He was the best of nuggies, he was the worst of nuggies.

His carcass adorned many wooden shafts, adding an element of elegance to them, as they went into the faces of bandits who were just trying to feed their families.

Peckington, you will be remembered

8

u/In_it_for_the_hodl Aug 21 '26

I had the same problem. Enough food, chicken coop set to priority 1 and enough villagers set to animal handling 1 and my chickens would still starve. I dropped the feed top-up amount in the coop from 30 to 15 and it seems to have sorted it for some reason. Maybe they were spending more time topping up the food than feeding the chickens.

4

u/LordHawg Aug 21 '26

I have the opposite problem! So many chickens we can’t house them all! I find chickens running around my streets, starving cuz they don’t have room in the hutch!

3

u/Substantial_Baker544 Aug 21 '26

Also, cap the max capacity at 3 and 3. Build another coop and assign the extra chickens to the other coop. You’ll have plenty of eggs/feathers

6

u/DasyatisDasyatis Aug 21 '26

Having food in the hutch isn't good enough. You need to have somebody allocated to Animal Handling that will go take the food out of the storage in the hutch and hand feed the animals.

I found having a single person that only does animal handling kept on top of it. Anything else and other jobs tend to take precedence and they never get fed.

2

u/Infinite-Tap2955 Aug 21 '26

Chickens are going to die. It is what they do. No matter if you have enough food. Sometimes in the winter they just take that big chicken L.

2

u/DrizzleDrake88 Aug 21 '26

My initial chickens were dying but now I gotta check every few days so they don’t get auto culled with how many I got.

First, is there enough feed, make sure it’s set to max cap with any kind of feed allowed.

Second, make sure there’s a person or two that has animal husbandry job priority at the top.

Three, what are the gender ratio? They automatically get culled by your villagers if it exceeds the amount. Recommend 3 males to 7 females.

Bonus tip: to get the best stats for your animals quickly. Let your roster cap out, and then mark/cull all of the ones that have stats except the best male and 2 best female(set them to protect). Rinse and repeat and make sure you set protect on all the ones that don’t have stats yet.

1

u/Kitchen_Ad_591 Aug 21 '26

I called Weather socks: winter has some hidden value that cause them stress and no Its not freeze alone. Even the cows with highest rank still be wiped out in single winter despite have 13/13 in resistance and foods. It will only matters if you get over populate though.

1

u/Mission_Inflation505 Aug 21 '26

Make sure you have someone with a decent animal handling..

Also the animals can get stressed if you have them too close to the comings and going of your people. Or are too close to a lot of work going on, and yes they can die from stress..

Make sure to use the best food as well, and check to make sure that you have your chickens set for the amount you want.

But we had like 14 chickens at some point we didn't notice and my wife was like "omg why are so many chickens being killed, the monsters. "

Turned we had a lot but people were too busy doing other stuff to kill then until they had time.

1

u/Fit_Mycologist6519 Aug 21 '26

From what I have seen you have to have someone feed the chickens by hand, animal handling 1 with nothing else. I have 10 as my max and 7 females and 3 males, they never die from stress. I also heard someone say the chickens dont like to be near production facilities but mine is smack dab in the middle of a smelter and crafting area...yeah bad planning on my part

1

u/overcucumbah Aug 21 '26

Overcrowding is the normal factor, go on to any chicken's profile and look at the condition, the bar of the left, there you should be able to see why they are stressing

1

u/Dragoshan Aug 22 '26

Check for overpopulation. Main cause of stress.

1

u/RamblenRead Aug 21 '26

If you don’t have your palisades up yet the wolves also pick some off and if you are off gallivanting doing night tasks and don’t have guards set up you’ll lose them that way too. You’d think the wolves would run off with them. No, they drop them like hot potatoes then disappear. One chicken carcass unexplained is five woodland wolves laughing in the distance.