How to Adjust Chicken Population Caps for Farms and Servers

Expanding Limits for Multi-Pen Farms

By default, despawning eggs stop hatching once 50 chickens exist within a 32-block radius. In a compact base, separate coops or egg farms often overlap and block one another from hatching new chicks.

1. Open your Minecraft config folder and edit the Despawning Eggs Hatch configuration file.

2. Raise onlyHatchIfLessChickensAroundThan above the default of 50 if you want a single large coop to hold a bigger flock.

3. Alternatively, lower radiusEntityLimiterCheck below the default of 32 so each coop only counts chickens inside its own immediate pen rather than neighboring barns across your base.

Tightening Limits to Prevent Server Lag

Unattended hay-block pens continuously turn laid eggs into baby chicks every five minutes (6,000 ticks), which can strain server performance if many players build farms near spawn or chunk loaders.

1. In your server's config folder, open the mod's configuration file.

2. Lower onlyHatchIfLessChickensAroundThan below 50 to enforce smaller personal coops.

3. Increase radiusEntityLimiterCheck above 32 so players cannot bypass the population cap by spacing several dense chicken pens slightly apart in the same base.

4. Keep eggOnlyHatchesWhenOnTopOfHayBlock set to true so stray wild chickens in loaded chunks never contribute extra entities, then save the file and restart the server.