Yes, animals only breed when you are nearby. The same software reason that unless they are right on top of you when you use the portal enemies wont destroy your portals when you are away from them. Load distance or something. Yeah, there is a breeding limit. (Adjust breeding limit mod available).

Originally posted by Grimtooth:

I didn't even know you can tame chickens. I usually slay them on sight.

They don't spawn in the game, so wtf are you talking about

That might be the case, I had upwards of 20 something chickens in an area and the eggs seemed to REALLY slow down.

Originally posted by bacon:

wondering if there is a crowding limit. i have happy chickens that arent laying eggs. too many in a small space? time to cull the flock?

does the player need to be present for the egg to be laid? cant portal to another place?

I have built an automatic layer, 8 meters high, 2 pairs. I’ll park my sim nearby but the most eggs I get is 25 before the eggs stop dropping.

I set my coups up with features to keep breading pair(s) in a small section, then another section to let them grow up, then when I get too many I have gates to push them out into a larger open area, or just let them roam base depending on the situation. It's working so far and I have been able to get quite a few in a relatively small area.

I put my hatching chickens 6 stone pillars up and let them drop eggs off the side to collect at a ground level pen. 3 pairs of chickens penned in 1m by 2m boxes on the edge of the platform. There is a pretty steady flow of eggs.

I‘ve 5 chicken on a 4 pieces floor pen, i stopped the fire and feed them only if i need eggs.

Tamed critters won't breed if there's already more than a certain number of their peers within a certain radius of them. The following link gives the method of how breeding works as well as max number and the distances checked for each (except for Hens at the moment, which only has a speculative time of 120 minutes for growth time):

https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Taming#Breeding

Yes, animals only breed when you are nearby. The same software reason that unless they are right on top of you when you use the portal enemies wont destroy your portals when you are away from them. Load distance or something. Yeah, there is a breeding limit. (Adjust breeding limit mod available).

I didn't even know you can tame chickens. I usually slay them on sight.

I also noticed that with too many chickens in a given area you don't hardly get any eggs. I reduced the number of egg laying chickens to around 10 and seem to get a lot more eggs on a regular basis now. I have a separate area for chickens that I intend to kill and don't worry about how many are in there.

Once there are enough eggs + chickens in place they seem to stop making eggs. If you have too many chickens they simply refuse. Just like if you have too many boars and such they refuse to breed. I have a pretty big hen house, split them in 11 pairs and they could only lay 8 eggs, so i guess 30 is the max in an x area. I reduced them to 8 pairs, seems to work better.

Also, just collect like 100 eggs and hatch them all at once, do know that chickens climb one another so it's going to be a hellhouse at some point.

Chickens (and boars) in this game seem to be far smarter than humans in RL.

While they stop producing offspring once it gets too crowded we, on the other hand, keep pushing out kids with no end in sight.

I think I like the chicken approach more.

Originally posted by Eightball:

Chickens (and boars) in this game seem to be far smarter than humans in RL.

While they stop producing offspring once it gets too crowded we, on the other hand, keep pushing out kids with no end in sight.

I think I like the chicken approach more.

They even stop growing if the enclosure is not big enough, had to rethink the whole spiked walls / enclosure location last night

In a 6m x 6m area, the chickens stop laying/hatching at 10.

I have not tested, so maybe for you to try;
3m x 3m limit 5 hens?
9m x 9m limit 15 hens?

This is VERY inaccurate and global estimation. I just know I have 10 hens in a 6 x 6, and they are happy, and stopped laying eggs. Stupid cluckers.