How to Build a Hands-Free Hatching Chicken Coop

Setting Up the Hay Floor

To make chicken breeding automatic without throwing eggs by hand, replace the floor of your chicken pen with hay blocks.

1. Craft hay bales from wheat at a crafting table and place them across the ground inside a fenced enclosure.

2. Lead at least one adult chicken into the pen, or bring stored eggs from your chests.

3. Remove any hoppers or hopper minecarts underneath those hay blocks so dropped eggs are not pulled into storage before they can hatch.

Letting Eggs Hatch Automatically

Once your hay floor is ready, any dropped egg item resting on top of it will hatch at the end of its normal despawn cycle.

1. Let your chickens lay eggs naturally onto the hay blocks, or drop eggs onto the hay as items using your Drop key or a redstone dropper. Stand back far enough that you do not pick the dropped eggs back up.

2. Keep the area loaded for five minutes (6,000 game ticks).

3. Right when the egg item reaches the end of its five-minute timer and would normally vanish, it spawns a baby chick instead.

With the default configuration (eggWillHatchChance set to 1.0), every despawning egg on a hay block becomes a chick until the local area reaches 50 chickens within a 32-block radius.