The Sims 4: Everything You Need to Know About Chickens

There are a few new animals for you to play with in The Sims 4: Cottage Living, this includes rabbits, birds, cows, llamas, foxes and the topic of our discussion today, chickens! These adorable hens and roosters are an incredible option for earning income from selling eggs, and are absolutely necessary if you want to live off the land and play with the new simple living lot challenge.

These animals are relatively easy to care for, but everything in the sims has secrets and small things you may never know, so let’s go over every single thing you need to know about chickens in The Sims 4: Cottage Living.

How to Get Chickens

The first step toward getting chickens on your sim’s lot is to make sure you have a chicken coop. You’ll find this item in the build catalog if you search chicken in the search bar, this item is called chicken coop. The description of this item states “Use this coop to buy and care for hens, roosters and chicks! Hint: you can build a fence around your coop to keep chickens from getting away. Must have at least one rooster and one hen in this coop to breed and create hatchable eggs!”

Once you have this item placed on your lot, you’ll definitely want to add a fence around it to protect your chickens from harm. You don’t want your chickens wandering too far away from your lot, especially if you have the wild foxes lot challenge because foxes are able to actually harm your chickens and they may pass away which is very sad, so be sure to build a fence to keep them secure and close to home.

To actually get your hands on some chickens, you’ll want to click on the coop and choose the purchase chickens interaction. A pop up will appear and you can choose between either roosters, chicks or hens as well as choose the colour between white, brown and black.

How to Care for Chickens

The new animals are relatively easy to care for, as all they need is a clean home, food and a bit of love. The first thing you need to make sure you are doing to is cleaning the coop which is one of the simple interactions you’ll see by clicking on the coop. If you don’t clean the coop often, it will get filthy and your chickens will be upset.

Next, you want to make sure you are feeding your chickens and there are two ways to do this. You can click on each individual chicken and choose to feed them for four simoleons, or you can click on the coop itself and choose scatter food nearby to place a bunch of food on the ground. Be sure to feed your chickens daily!

Finally, your chickens need attention. You will want to do a handful of social interactions with your chickens each day to make sure they are feeling loved and cared for.

If you do not do these things there is a chance of your chickens leaving your farm, never to return which can be very sad and a big waste of money and potential. The game will let you know a day or two before they are planning to leave so you right your wrongs and give them the love they deserve.

It is important to note that chickens are not immortal and they will pass away eventually, if you want to extend their life span you can always give them some healthy treats to help give them a few extra days before the Grim Reaper comes and does this adorably tragic animation that will break your heart.

Upgrading Your Chicken Coop

If you want to keep your chickens both safe and protected, you’ll want to upgrade your coop which can be found under the actions menu under upgrade. There are 3 upgrade types for you to complete that all have different outcomes and are great for different reasons:

• Fox Be Gone Alarm
• ComfortCare Life Extender
• Coop Auto-Feeder

The fox be gone alarm is going to add a small alarm to the top of your chicken coop that will sound any time a fox tries to enter to keep your chickens protected so they will no longer get eaten by an evil fox. The coop auto feeder is awesome because it will start auto-feeding your chickens so you will no longer need to scatter feed or individually feed your chickens.

Perhaps the best upgrade is the comfort care life extender, because chickens don’t have the longest lifespan and this will allow them to live for a bit longer than normal so you don’t have to get sad too soon!

In order for your sims to do these upgrades you are going to need to get your hands on some Livestock Upgrade Parts. These are special parts that you can’t even purchase! You need to get these by doing some errands for the local community like Agnes and Agatha Crumplebottom, the pub owner, or the grocery store owner.

Trading Your Chickens

If you no longer want to have your chickens for whatever reason, you have the option of trading these chickens for various resources. You’ll find this option under the actions menu when you click on a specific chicken or the coop itself. There are 4 options for trading for your to choose from:

• Animal Treats
• Simoleons
• Ingredients
• Meat *does not apply to chicks*

The amount of resources you get depends on a few factors including the age of the chicken, the happiness level of the chicken and if they are a rooster or a hen. Golden chickens will earn you way more money then regular chickens too!

When you trade an animal for something like animal treats your chicken will run off and be gone forever, and eventually a delivery will come with your animal treats. Any clothing that the animal was wearing will be returned to your sim’s inventory. You will get the treats the next day in your sim’s mailbox.

Possibly the worst of these trading options is to trade your animals for meat, this makes me so sad! Of course we get meat from animals but after getting attached to these virtual chickens I was very sad to do this. When you do it your will get white meat delivered to your mailbox the next day.

It is important to note that your sims aren’t going to be super happy about trading your chickens, especially if they have a high relationship with these chickens. For example, my sim got a Top Animal Betrayal moodlet that made her +4 sad for 24 Hours!

Golden Chickens

There are, of course, special chicken types in the game with both an Evil chicken and a Golden chicken being present. Obviously, the nicer of the two is the golden chicken that can actually help in your farming and make your crops better quality.

One fun detail of golden chickens is that if you cook a meal (like eggs and toast) with a golden egg, your sims will get a dazed moodlet that says The power of the golden chicken compels Jenny. Now inbued with the powers of the chicken sage there is no telling what could happen next.

When you have this moodlet active your sims will actually glow a little bit and have sparkles around them, so you get some fun visual effects from eating these golden eggs too!

Hands down the best part about having a golden chicken is that they will improve the quality of your crops with their incredibly fun golden chicken abilities. There will be intense golden eyes on the chicken and they will throw a bright golden light on a crop to improve the quality, allowing you to earn more money.

Evil Chickens

In addition to the incredible golden chicken that can help you, there is an evil chicken that can actually kill your sims. To get yourself an evil chicken you need to feed them the midnight treat that you can purchase at the garden stall if you are lucky.

These chickens are going to lay obsidian eggs which your sims probably shouldn’t eat, these eggs will make your sim’s eyes glow red and will give them an angry moodlet so if you’re trying for an angry emotional death this can be a great first step.

Just be careful with these chickens because if you have a negative relationship with an evil chicken they can attack you, which if done properly can lead to your sim’s death.

Finchwick Fair

Each week in game there is a new version of the Finchwick Fair with four versions total, one for every week during a month. One of those fairs is going to have a Chicken and Egg competition that you will definitely want to enter.

You are able to add your chickens to your inventory during the fair hours and bring them to be entered into the competition, and any egg that is in your inventory can be entered as well. These are judged by the town mayor and will be looked at in a number of ways.

For chickens, you want to make sure that they are happy, that you have a good relationship with them, and golden chickens will do the best at the fair so get a golden chicken for the best results.

For eggs, you want to make sure that they are excellent or perfect quality before entering them if you want to win. Special eggs (i.e., green or orange eggs) are going to do better, with golden eggs having the best results.

Chicken Death Type

There is actually a way for your sims to die if they are not so friendly with a chicken. An evil chicken who has a bad relationship with a sim can attack your sims and if you let them get attack twice, they are going to experience death by chicken. This is a hilarious death, which you can see featured in the video below from RachyBop.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, friends! That’s everything you need to know about taking care of and raising chickens in The Sims 4: Cottage Living. These are probably my favourite animals that came with this new pack and can make a great income by selling their eggs, plus they are super necessary if you want to use the simple living lot challenge.