Kibble? How to Feed RimWorld Chickens Right
Chickens in RimWorld are classified as herbivores but can eat kibble, which is a universal animal feed made from mixed meat and plant ingredients. Kibble is actually one of the most efficient foods for chickens due to its small portion size (0.05 nutrition each) and infinite shelf life.
Quick-Start Guide: Feeding Chickens in RimWorld
- Pen Your Chickens: Use fenced areas with a pen marker. Chickens in RimWorld 1.3+ must be penned.
- Allow Grazing: Chickens can eat grass directly from the ground. A grassy pen provides free food!
- Provide Hay or Kibble: Create a stockpile inside the pen for hay or kibble. Colonists will automatically refill it.
- Keep Human Food Away: Don't store meals in animal pens. Chickens will eat valuable meals meant for colonists.
- Manage Egg Production: Collect eggs regularly to prevent spoilage or animals eating them.
- Watch Population: Use Auto-slaughter to prevent overpopulation. Chickens breed very quickly!
Feeding Basics for Chickens
Chicken Diet 101
In RimWorld, chickens are classified as Herbivorous animals. Their diet includes:
- Grass: Chickens will graze on wild grass in their pen
- Hay: Dried haygrass, efficient to produce in bulk (0.05 nutrition each)
- Kibble: Mixed meat and vegetable animal feed (0.05 nutrition each)
- Vegetables: Raw vegetables like corn, rice, berries (usually better saved for colonists)
- Meals/Pemmican: They will eat these if available (wasteful - avoid if possible)
- Eggs: They can eat unfertilized eggs if starving
Hunger Rate: Adult chickens consume only 0.22 nutrition per day - very efficient!
What is Kibble?
Kibble is a universal animal feed crafted at a butcher table by combining:
- 1 nutrition of vegetables/plants (20 corn, potatoes, etc.)
- 1 nutrition of meat or animal products (20 insect meat, human meat, etc.)
A batch produces 50 kibble (0.05 nutrition each) with 125% efficiency - you get 2.5 nutrition output from 2 nutrition input.
Key Benefits:
- Never spoils (only deteriorates if left outside)
- Perfect portion size for small animals (prevents waste)
- Allows use of "undesirable" meats (insect, human) without mood debuffs
Using the Pen System
As of RimWorld 1.3 (July 2021), animals like chickens must be kept in pens:
- Build fences around an area and place a pen marker
- Ensure the pen has grass for grazing or a stockpile for hay/kibble
- Select the pen marker to see "nutrition growth per day" - if this number exceeds your animals' total hunger rate, they can survive on grazing alone
- Keep the pen secure - chickens that escape might wander off or be eaten by predators
New to RimWorld? Check out our complete beginner's guide for more colony basics.
Common Problems & Solutions
🔍 "My chickens won't eat the kibble I put out!"
Possible causes:
- Chickens aren't hungry yet (they eat at below 30% hunger)
- The kibble isn't in their pen or accessible area
- They're preferring to graze on available grass first
- The pen marker might be incorrectly set up or missing
Solution: Ensure kibble is placed inside their pen and wait until they're actually hungry. Check the pen marker is working correctly.
🍽️ "Chickens are eating my colonists' fine meals!"
Problem: Animals will eat any food available to them - including valuable meals.
Solutions:
- Keep human food in areas chickens cannot access
- Ensure the pen is separate from food storage areas
- Use doors to separate animal and human food zones
- Never drop meals inside animal pens
❄️ "How do I feed chickens in winter when there's no grass?"
Solutions:
- Store hay or kibble before winter arrives
- Calculate needed supplies: (0.22 nutrition × chickens × days)
- Consider growing haygrass indoors with hydroponics
- Grow fungus in caves (with Ideology DLC)
- Reduce flock size before winter if supplies are limited
🥚 "My chickens are eating their own eggs!"
Problem: If hungry or if eggs are left unharvested, chickens might eat eggs.
Solutions:
- Set up a critical priority stockpile for eggs outside the pen
- Assign a dedicated hauler to collect eggs promptly
- Keep chickens well-fed with hay or kibble
- Consider using an "egg box" from mods or DLC
📈 "My chicken population is exploding!"
Problem: Chickens breed extremely quickly and can overwhelm your colony.
Solutions:
- Use the Auto-slaughter feature (Animals tab) to set population limits
- Separate hens from roosters to prevent fertilized eggs
- Sell excess chickens to traders
- Process extra chickens into meat before they consume too much feed
- Watch your game performance - hundreds of chickens can cause lag
Efficiency & Advanced Strategies
Feed Comparison: What's Best for Chickens?
| Food Type | Nutrition/Unit | Spoils? | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grass (grazing) | ~0.001/sec | N/A (regrows) | Zero work, completely free | Seasonal, requires space |
| Hay (raw) | 0.05 each | No (only deteriorates) | Easy to grow, small portions | Requires growing/harvesting |
| Kibble | 0.05 each | Never | 125% efficiency, never spoils, small portions | Requires cooking work and meat |
| Simple Meal | 0.90 each | Yes (days) | High nutrition per item | Massive waste! Chickens eat the whole meal |
| Nutrient Paste | 0.90 each | No (in dispenser) | 300% efficiency from raw food | Same waste problem as meals |
| Pemmican | 0.05 each | No (long-lasting) | 160% efficiency, small portions | Better used for humans/caravans |
| Baby Food (Biotech) | 0.05 each | Yes (like meals) | 200% efficiency, small portions | Requires Biotech DLC, spoils |
Conclusion: For chickens, kibble and hay are generally the most practical options. Kibble is slightly more efficient and never spoils, while hay is simpler to produce.
Chickens as "Nutrition Amplifiers"
- A hen eats ~0.22 nutrition/day but produces a 0.25 nutrition egg daily
- That's a net +0.03 nutrition gain per hen per day
- 10 hens = +0.3 nutrition/day (like a bonus meal every 3 days)
- This "breaks physics" by essentially creating food from nothing
Over time, a chicken provides much more value as an egg layer than as meat. For maximum efficiency, keep hens for eggs and only slaughter excess roosters. For optimal pen placement and colony layout design, consider integrating your animal areas into your overall base plan.
Advanced Techniques & Exploits
The Kibble → Nutrient Paste Trick
For extreme efficiency, you can combine two conversion bonuses:
- Make kibble (125% efficiency)
- Feed kibble into nutrient paste dispenser (300% efficiency)
- This creates a potential 3.75× nutrition gain from raw resources
Note: Requires micromanagement and a nutrient paste dispenser. Animals won't use the dispenser directly.
Biotech DLC: Baby Food Exploit
With the Biotech DLC, you can:
- Convert 5 vegetables (0.25 nutrition) into 10 baby food (0.50 nutrition)
- Feed baby food to chickens (they'll eat it!)
- Each piece is 0.05 nutrition, perfect for small animals
- This doubles your plant food's value for feeding animals
Drawback: Baby food still spoils like regular meals, unlike kibble.
⚠️ Performance Warning
Large chicken farms can severely impact game performance:
- Hundreds of chickens can cause noticeable lag
- Each animal requires pathfinding and AI calculations
- Keep populations manageable with auto-slaughter
- Consider fewer, larger animals if your PC struggles
Mods & Tools for Feeding
Efficient Animal Feed
This mod changes kibble's nutrition to 0.01 per piece, preventing even minimal waste when feeding small animals like chickens.
Animal Feed Trough
Adds a trough building that holds hay/kibble, keeping food off the ground to prevent deterioration and looking more farm-like.
Colony Manager (Fluffy's)
Automates farming and butchering tasks. Set it to maintain specific amounts of feed, hay, or a certain chicken population.
Animals Logic
UI improvements for managing animals, allowing any pawn to handle specific animal tasks and showing animal hunger at a glance.
Recent RimWorld Updates
Timeline of Animal Feeding Changes
- Added "Twisted" mutant meat (can be used in kibble)
- New animal eating sound effects
- No fundamental changes to animal feeding mechanics
- Added baby food (can be fed to animals)
- Introduced pollution mechanics (affecting plant growth)
- Added nutrient solutions for growth vats
- Introduced the pen system for animals
- Added auto-slaughter mechanics
- Changed how animals are fed (haulers bring food to pens)
Frequently Asked Questions
Can chickens graze on grass instead of me giving them kibble?
Yes! On maps with vegetation, chickens will happily graze on grass. This is free nutrition and should be your first food source. However, grass regrows slowly, so for large flocks or during winter, you'll need to supplement with hay or kibble.
Will chickens eat hay if it's available?
Definitely. Hay (harvested haygrass) is one of the best foods for chickens. Simply store hay in their pen and they'll eat it directly. Nutritionally, hay and kibble are very similar (both 0.05 nutrition per unit), but hay is simpler to produce since you only need to grow plants.
My chickens are starving but there's a pile of corn right next to them. Why?
Check these common issues:
- The corn might be forbidden or in a zone they can't access
- The food might not be inside their pen boundary
- The chickens might be suffering from an illness or toxic buildup
If edible food is physically present and reachable, animals will eat it when hungry enough.
Is it better to use eggs or feed them back to animals?
Generally, eggs are better used to feed your colonists or sold to traders. They're high-value items. Converting eggs back to animal feed is possible (as ingredients in kibble or baby food) but usually only worth it in extreme efficiency loops.
Unfertilized eggs are great as ingredients for fine meals, while fertilized eggs are more valuable hatched into new chickens.
Should I bother with chickens, or are other animals better for food?
Chickens are among the best animals for pure food output due to their egg production and fast reproduction. They're particularly efficient for turning plant matter into animal products.
Alternatives to consider:
- Cows: Great for milk production and eventual meat, but slower reproduction
- Pigs: Fast-breeding and can eat anything (even corpses), but no secondary products
- Alpacas/Muffalo: Provide wool plus eventual meat, but less food-efficient
For feeding your colony efficiently, chickens and cows are top-tier choices. New players should start with our beginner's guide before diving into advanced animal management.
Conclusion: Chickens, Kibble, and Colony Greatness
Yes, chickens eat kibble in RimWorld—and they thrive on it. Kibble is often the optimal feed for chickens, efficiently turning unwanted ingredients into nutritious animal food that never spoils.
A well-managed chicken coop can become the backbone of your colony's food economy. With proper feeding and population control, your chickens will provide a steady stream of eggs and occasional meat—turning simple plants into valuable animal products. Once you've mastered chicken farming, you might even consider expanding to multiple colonies for specialized farming operations.
Just remember the cautionary tale of one unfortunate colony that let their chicken population explode, resulting in "the landscape of a Fallout game—desiccated chicken corpses everywhere, hardly any grass, and lots of missing trees..." Manage your flock, or it manages you!
Action Recap: Key Points to Remember
- ✓ Feed them right: Use hay or kibble to feed chickens efficiently. Avoid giving them valuable meals.
- ✓ Pen them in: Always keep chickens in a secure pen with accessible food, especially in winter.
- ✓ Collect eggs: Harvest eggs promptly for cooking or selling before they spoil or get eaten.
- ✓ Control population: Use auto-slaughter to prevent overbreeding and resource strain.
- ✓ Leverage mechanics: Use kibble's efficiency and even advanced techniques like paste/baby food to maximize returns.