Will a Slab Stop a Chicken in Minecraft? Everything You Need to Know

Egg farming is the process of collecting a large number of chicken eggs from chickens. From an automated source of eggs, a chicken farm which produces additional end products like raw/cooked chicken and feather can be constructed with the addition of egg-dispensing and chicken-killing systems.

The chicken is the most farmable animal in Minecraft. Unlike cows and sheep, it does not require any food to grow up or to reproduce. No matter where the chicken is kept, everything just happens automatically. In addition, cooked chicken is almost as good as other cooked meats for restoring hunger.

Minecraft players have been debating a simple question for years will a slab stop a chicken? With chickens being such a core part of the game, understanding how these mobs interact with different blocks is key to building efficient farms and securing your livestock. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about chickens and slabs in Minecraft.

Chickens are neutral mobs that spawn naturally in most overworld biomes They are a great source of food like raw chicken, cooked chicken, and feathers Chickens also lay eggs which can be used for cooking or hatching baby chicks. Understanding chicken behavior is the first step to utilizing them effectively in your Minecraft world.

Some key facts about chickens

They wander around aimlessly, foraging for seeds on grass blocks.
Chickens are one block tall and cannot naturally jump vertically more than 1 block.
They will avoid walking over blocks like pressure plates, rails, and tripwire.
Chickens are passive mobs that will run away when attacked.
They can be bred using seeds to produce eggs and baby chickens.

This baseline behavior informs how chickens interact with the game’s various blocks, including slabs.

Slab Types in Minecraft

Slabs are half-blocks that come in two different forms:

Level slabs: These go in the bottom half of the block space. They create a 0. 5 block elevation change.
Upper slabs are put in the upper half of the block space. When put together with a solid block below them, they make a crawlspace that is 1 block high.

Slabs can be crafted from various materials like cobblestone, wood planks, sandstone, etc. The material does not impact how mobs interact with them. The key factor is whether it is a lower or upper slab.

Will a Lower Slab Stop a Chicken?

Yes, lower slabs will stop chickens from walking over them. The half-block rise is too high for chickens to handle on their own. Their AI that finds the way sees the slab as something that needs to be avoided.

However, there are a few caveats:

Baby chickens also cannot jump up lower slabs.
Chickens can still walk up lower slabs if pushed by a player or flowing water.
Chickens can swim over lower slabs submerged in water easily.

So in most situations, a lower slab will act as a barrier for chicken movement, but other factors can override this limitation.

Will an Upper Slab Stop a Chicken?

Upper slabs on their own will not stop a chicken. In fact, chickens can freely walk under an upper slab.

But when put on top of a solid block below, an upper slab makes a crawlspace that is one block high and chickens can’t get into it on their own. This can be used to trap chickens below the slabs.

The key requirements for an upper slab chicken trap:

The upper slab must have a solid block like cobblestone, wood planks, etc. directly underneath it.
There must be a 1 block or less gap between the upper slab and ground below. Chickens can still enter a 2+ block high gap.

When built correctly, upper slab structures are very effective for containing chickens. Just be wary of potential clipping bugs that could allow rare escapes.

Using Slabs for Chicken Farming and Containment

Understanding how slabs influence chicken movement opens up useful applications for farming and containment:

Ring chicken coops with lower slabs to prevent wandering.
Funnel chickens with lower slabs to guide them into containment or collection systems.
Trap chickens under upper slabs to automatically collect eggs.
Use upper slab corridors to move chickens between locations.
Deter chickens from trampling crops by surrounding plots with lower slabs.

With a bit of redstone and water streams, you can even build fully automated chicken cookers using the right slab placements. Overall, slabs give players immense control over chicken movement.

While a simple concept, the interaction between chickens and slabs reveals the depth of Minecraft’s mob mechanics. Both lower and upper slabs can be used to stop or steer chicken movement in particular directions. This has huge utility for farming, containment and automation. Hopefully this guide provided a comprehensive overview of the nuances of chicken and slab dynamics. Just remember these core principles:

Lower slab = obstacle that chickens avoid
Upper slab = containment when solid block is beneath

Mastering these simple behaviors will enhance your chicken farming capabilities by leaps and bounds. So get out there and start slabbing! Your egg production will thank you.

will a slab stop a chicken minecraft

Chicken farming and cooking[]

A chicken farm produces chicken products including raw chicken, cooked chicken, and feathers. Generally speaking, such farms combine a source of eggs, a dispenser to generate chickens, and a killing mechanism to obtain the loot from the mature chickens.

11x11x6 Automatic farm[]

The hopper egg farm is a pretty simple machine that doesn’t need access to nether quartz. On the main floor, water keeps chickens inside while they lay eggs, which is washed into a hopper. The eggs then go back into the system’s supply chest. This chest feeds an automatic hatcher, which can refill the main floor after a harvest. The hatcher is controlled by a despawn timer, which stops the system from always spawning chickens (or until the server crashes).

On the outside, this farm will have an 11×11 fence or wall, with doors or gates in the middle of each side. There is a pillar and (at least a) partial roof in the center, and an “egg room” dug 3 blocks deep beneath that. The egg room and its pillar can be adapted to other farm layouts. You will also want a tunnel leading to the egg room, with space to get at the chest and other devices to retrieve meat and feathers), and the switches to trigger or disable the hatcher. The chickens are mostly kept in by water, so the farm doesn’t have to worry about them walking through walls and fences. The schematics are below. Both the gold and stone-brick blocks can be “any full block,” but the gold blocks must be opaque. Stone-brick blocks, on the other hand, can be opaque, clear, or even air.

Automatic 11×11 Egg farm Plans View at:

Three droppers, a dispenser, three hoppers, a chest, a few switches, two redstone repeaters, two redstone torches, and six redstone dust are in the base machinery. It will take at least 6 smooth stones, 15 iron, 29 cobblestones, 10 “logs” of wood (plus some scraps), 18 redstone dust, and 3 string to make that gear from scratch. You’ll also need 7 solid opaque blocks and a few that can be either opaque or transparent. The chest can be doubled for an extra 2 wood, and you may want to put another chest somewhere else in the egg room for everyday storage.
The 9×9 floor inside the room needs 78 more blocks or slabs (at least the space above the second chest needs to be a slab if it is used). You might want to add a trapdoor from the chicken floor to the egg room. The water won’t be able to get through the trapdoor, and chickens won’t be able to fall through it either.
The base will be a slab and two more blocks. One of the blocks should have a jack-o-lantern or some other kind of light on it. It doesn’t have to be a block with four torches; you just need a light so the chicks don’t drown at the edges.
At least 10 solid blocks must be on the roof to stop the eggs from going through (3×3 over the dispenser and one on top of the pillar). Slabs can be used to cover the rest of the ceiling.
The walls should be made of solid blocks that are at least two layers high. The ceiling layer is usually three layers high. This will cost about 80 stone and/or glass blocks or 20 wood “logs” cut into planks. It’s best to put doors in the middle of any wall, or all four of them. It’s safer to make at least the floor and the bottom row of the wall out of blast-resistant blocks. These can be made of any stone, brick, hardened clay, or even obsidian. So, if it does get blasted, it will be less of a mess and easier to clean up. You can see in and out of the farm when the top row is made of glass blocks. This helps you avoid creeper blasts in the first place. You can also add other defenses, like a moat, around it to keep creepers from damaging the blocks, even if they do explode.
It’s possible to add a comparator and a redstone lamp after going to the Nether. You may need to add some dust and a repeater to connect them. You can put up an easy-to-see sign outside the building to let people know when the egger has enough eggs for a full run.

Once the walls are set up, it is easiest to build the egg room from above. Make sure to offset the room so the input hopper is in the center of the floor, and light the egg room properly. When orienting the room, think about where you want the access tunnel to go. As shown, an access corridor leading to the lower left of the diagram allows getting at all the containers and both switches.

The hatcher consists of two droppers facing up, with a dispenser facing up on top of them. These are fed by the hoppers, with the chest providing extra storage, and driven by a 3-clock. The clock is on the right edge of the diagram, from the block with the lever southwards and downwards. That lever lets you disable the hatcher completely—place it and turn it on as soon as the clock is built, so you can build the rest without clicking noises.

The despawn timer (upper edge of diagram) is a dropper facing down over pressure plate. It works by dropping an item onto the pressure plate, which will turn off the torch and enable the clock until the item despawns. The block in front of the pressure plate helps avoid accidentally picking up the item as you pass near, but if you go close enough you can still pick it up and cut off the timer. Once youve built and connected the despawn timer, you can turn the lever back off, as the inactive timer will keep the clock disabled. The despawn timers dropper can be loaded with any disposable item, such as surplus seeds or eggs. The block in front of the pressure plate is just to make it a little harder to accidentally pick up the item—glass will let you see if the item is on target, or has missed the pressure plate.

Once the egg room is built and closed over, continue with the central pillar: Above the hopper, place a top slab, then two blocks above that. You can make the lower one a jack-o-lantern, for simple lighting. From the top block of the pillar, extend a roof out over the dispenser and at least one square around it in every direction. Put a torch on the roof to avoid unfortunate monster spawns. Note that if you use slabs, you may get chicks on top of the roof. If you have the minimum roof, theyll just fall into the water, but if you want to extend the roof to the edges, use non-transparent blocks to avoid escapees.

Note that the dispenser is purposely separated from the collection hopper/central pillar, to allow for the dispensers variable aim. The slab (or other transparent block) between them is only needed if you add the optional chest, but if you do, an opaque block there will prevent the chest from being opened. Note that as of version 1.14, you can place the optional chest without connecting it to the main chest. It will still feed into the egger, but may be useful for stashing extra eggs, especially when you are about to harvest and want space in the main chest for feathers and meat.

Last of all, place buckets of water in each corner; they will flow to the central pillar. Load up your chest with eggs and/or lead in some chickens, and just hit the button. Then let the eggs accumulate until you have enough for a full run (at least a dozen stacks in the chest). (If you are starting with just a few chickens and/or eggs, an early run with just a few stacks can get you a few more chickens to fill the system more quickly.) If you have many eggs, you might want to do a longer run by disabling the despawn timer (add a lever to the block for its output torch), or just do a second run immediately when the first finishes.

If you have glowstone and nether quartz, you can optionally add a couple of top slabs on level one, next to the hoppers. Atop these youll want a comparator facing out from the main chest, and next to it something to provide a comparison signal of 8. This corresponds to 13 stacks in the chest, which is enough for a full run. A cake with three slices eaten will do fine. You can then run a redstone trail from the comparator to a redstone lamp. Embedding the lamp in the ground near the entrance can let you reach it with 8 or less dust; any further, and youll need a repeater in there too. This is not shown in the schematic, because without it this build does not need Nether materials.

The clock is normally disabled by either the inactive timer, or by the lever, either of which will disable the clock. With the clock disabled, the incoming eggs will fill first the bottom dropper, then the bottom hoppers, then the chest, and finally the intake hopper. This gives a total of 52 stacks storage, or 79 with the optional second chest.

Now, 79 stacks of eggs would produce an average of 163 chickens, which may be enough to seriously lag the game when you are nearby. Worse, they will take over 15 minutes to feed through, because the hoppers are slower than the clock. If you leave the hatcher running much longer than that, the first chickens will grow up and start laying eggs! At that point, youll be facing exponential growth, limited only by the speed of the hoppers. If the hatcher is left running after the first generation grows up, the system will be producing 2.6 chickens a minute at first, but if the game doesnt crash, it will eventually peak at 18 per minute, 363 per game day. In such numbers, the chickens will overflow any enclosure, and the huge numbers will cause the game to lag badly. However, if you dont mind risking “Chickmageddon”, you can skip the despawn timer forming the top two rows of the egg room. In more recent versions of Minecraft, the crowding will eventually cause chickens to start suffocating, but for this design that may not be enough to prevent problems.

This despawn timer and inverter will enable the clock for 5 minutes only, letting you hatch 500 eggs at a time (about 31 stacks, producing an average of 64 chickens). There is a bit of a trick here: Since the clock has a period of 0.6 seconds, 300 seconds gets you 500 cycles, but the clock and dispenser are faster than the hoppers feeding the dispenser. The hoppers alone could deliver less than 375 eggs to the dispenser, but the eggs in the bottom dropper give just enough of a head start to cover a batch of 500. As noted above, the chickens will need a bit over a real-time hour to replenish the eggs used; if you dont want to wait for that, you can harvest the chickens as soon as theyre mature, then run the egger again and let the second batch refill the chests while you do other things.

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FAQ

How do you stop chickens from escaping in Minecraft?

Single-height wooden fences (or a small cave) will suffice, but either way it’s best to add an “entry lock”: a fenced space with gates leading both to the pen and to outside. This will help keep chickens from getting out—if one of the gates is always shut, the chickens won’t be able to find a way to get outside.

Can baby chickens go through slabs?

In Minecraft, baby chickens can indeed pass through half-slabs, while adult chickens cannot. This is because baby chickens are smaller than a half-block and can squeeze through spaces that are smaller than a full block. However, they won’t automatically walk through half-slab spaces; .

What kills chickens in Minecraft?

Chickens will often get attacked by other mobs such as ocelots and untamed cats and foxes.

How do I protect my chickens in Minecraft?

Replace the walls with 2-high sections of glass blocks. They will keep chickens from getting out or drowning because they are full blocks that can be seen through.