How to get Valheim chickens and hatch eggs

When it comes to breeding a coop of Valheim chickens, it all sounds fairly easy at face value. Incubate eggs, let them hatch, and watch your brood grow. However, before you get too heavily invested in those dreams of becoming a Valheim farmer, you'll need to know where to get your hands on eggs.

That's where we come in. This guide will tell you everything you need to know to get started as a chicken keeper in Valheim, from how to build an enclosure to acquiring those all-important eggs. If you want to know how to tame boar in Valheim, we have a separate guide for those needs. For now though, let's get to know our feathered friends a little better, and find out how to best accommodate them.

How to get Valheim chickens

To start your chicken farm you'll need to buy eggs from Haldor, the dwarven trader in the Black Forest. An egg will cost you 1500 Coins, but you'll need two chickens to start breeding so it'll cost you 3000 Coins.

Haldor will only sell chicken eggs after you’ve defeated Yagluth however. So you'll need to reach that point before you approach him or eggs won't be in his inventory. Because chickens don’t spawn in the Mistlands and you have to buy them, this essentially makes them a Mistlands creature in terms of progression.

How to hatch eggs in Valheim

Now that you’ve got your eggs, it’s time to hatch them. However, placing eggs on the ground will be too cold to hatch anything. You need two things to change this: a nearby fire, and a roof. You can build something as elaborate as you want but all you really need is a base campfire underneath a single piece of roof.

To check if an egg is ready to hatch, hover over it and the text should tell you it's ‘warm’. It takes roughly one in-game day to hatch a chicken. A very important detail: eggs cannot hatched in a stack! So, don't throw a stack of two eggs on the ground, hold CTRL and left-click to select a single egg.

Newborn chickens also run wild, so build an enclosure around the egg before it hatches and they escape. Unlike real-world eggs, and luckily for us, Valheim eggs are unbreakable, so you can safely pick it up and throw it on the ground again if necessary.

How to breed chickens in Valheim

Next, wait until your chickens are fully grown. After about two or three in-game days, they will automatically turn into adults Hens. Don’t worry about that name; although it implies your chickens are are female, they can still breed.

All you need for chicken breeding is at two adult chickens and plenty of food. New chickens will spawn as eggs again, and without a campfire and a roof - so if you just want to farm eggs, simply take away the warmth.

Valheim chicken food

Chickens eat seeds of any kind so here’s an overview of the current chicken food in Valheim:

Carrot Seeds
Turnip Seeds
Onion Seeds
Birch Seeds
Beech Seeds

How to use chickens in Valheim

Valheim chickens are kept for three resources: eggs, meat, and feathers. The eggs and meat are used for Mistlands-related cooking recipes, while the feathers are great for arrow-crafting. If you want to kill a tamed chicken you need to use a Butcher’s Knife in solo mode. The same goes for co-op if friendly fire is disabled.

Enjoy building your Valheim chicken farm!

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