Announcements

Hi all, many have come forward with concerns about both chickens getting released immediately after purchase for a small profit ("flipping") and the blocking of people who do it. I think that there needs to be a conversation, so I have set up a forum thread to support a constructive conversation about it. Principles I go by:

1. Chicken flipping is not against the rules. It's a legal way to use farmhouse and release.
2. I want players to have the ability to curate a game experience that is enjoyable. This includes setting up notices about ways they don't want to be interacted with, including not having their sold chickens immediately released.
3. This conflict is not surprising, other game websites have seen big disagreements about this exact same issue. It can't be helped that there are players in both camps—those who dislike flipping and those who prefer to do it—because these two groups play the game in a fundamentally different way. I do not see one as "truer to the game" than the other.

Recommended actions

• Because this is about people's different preferences and playstyles, keep in mind that you're playing this game alongside others who approach the chickens in a completely different way from you. It's not in my purview to police how people play, beyond rule breaking behaviour, so I can only ask you to be open minded about this.
• For those who don't like flipping, use a neutral tone when referring to the action, on the site + in the Discord server, i.e. "please don't flip/immediately release this chicken." Focus on the action, not the person. Focusing on people risks being hurtful/targeted and builds an atmosphere of distrust.
• You can use the block button however you like, but I'd also like to ask for people to consider a range of ways to address this in addition to blocking.
• For those who flip chickens, note that there's a subset of users who feel strongly negative about chicken flipping. This is usually because they have sold chickens cheaply with the intention of helping new players, or the sentiment that the chickens are living beings with stories, personalities and effort put into them. This may be noted in the sale listings/forum threads, and I suggest keeping those requests in mind to keep the space comfortable for all.
• EDIT: Also, always keep in mind that once you give a chicken away or sell it, you no longer have control over what happens to it. If you do not want your chickens "flipped", always sell for higher than the release reward.

I would also like to apologise if the wording sounded targeted/coercive and have been revising the message as thoughts have come in. The truth is that I do have an opinion on this - as in there's one way that I prefer the site to be - and incorporating other people's ways of playing in how I administrate the site has been an evolving process as well! I think this site is past the point where I can simply decide for other people what I want it to be, it's too big and socially complex. I am currently too busy with the rest of my life to actively keep tabs on it so I would just like people to be kind to each other and remember we're all just humans who do things differently, and that is the best we can do 🙂

Feeling Blue

Don't ask the Literature teacher what it means. (Blue tones the chicken.)

Lumiere

This chicken hails from the advent of film. (Greyscales the chicken's colours.)

Try them in the Dressing Room | Buy them at the Eggschange

As a side note, I will be on extended break while I work on my PhD final seminar, most likely until the end of March. This doesn't necessarily mean no updates, just that updates + debugging will have a longer lead time!

Happy new year from ChickenPet!

#2025 MY TIME IS NOW

circlejourney

3 months • ZW

Reminder: time is up for the Secret Santa! If you have not received your gift yet, please ping me in #site-discussion on the Discord server or message me on https://chicken.pet/messages/create/circlejourney so that I can check who your sender was and prod them to send their gift / send you the 50 egg compensation if relevant.

In other recent news:

• You can now view the family trees of released chickens; link is on their release profile. Example
• Released parents and grandparents now show up in family trees.
• Blocked users are no longer able to buy your listing if you blocked them after they loaded a page with your listings on it, and now can't see your pages and vice versa.
• Ownership logs now show blocked users as (Blocked) or (User not found), depending on your settings - (User not found) is the same as a closed account

The shopkeeper's bank surpassed 1 million eggs on Christmas day. That's right—at the time of writing, she possesses 77.5% of the total currency eggs on the site.

Word has gotten out about the obscene wealth hiding in her coffers. Some chickens are eager to nick a few (surely she doesn't count her eggs every night). Others think they should be redistributed to the masses. Introducing...

Heists.

Yes, you can now steal eggs from Mum—but it will take a little skill, and a lot of luck. Assemble a heist team from your coop's chickens! Heists get harder the more eggs you're stealing. And be careful—each time you fail a heist, Mum will mark up shop prices by 5% until the end of the day.

The Heist minigame can be accessed either through the Games men or via the link under Mum's image in the Eggschange. Or through the links on this announcement. Check it out! You can read more about the mechanics on the Heist page, as well as the game's own info page.

The game is in its early stages, so if you find bugs, do report them in a ticket!

The intended narrative flavouring of the Release feature was that the released chickens were off somewhere, travelling the world, but it appears (from discussion) like previous UI choices made it seem like they had died. I've made some changes to make the intent clearer!

• Released chickens now show in offspring lists as a bindle icon, so it looks less like a chicken died
• The release screen has been spruced up with an image of the chicken carrying their luggage. (I do want to note that they will lose all their accessories and filters in this image, as those are returned to your inventory.)
• For chickens who have been released after the genotype archival update, you can also view their travelling image anytime (via clickable links under their parents' profiles and in family trees). Example Note that this image is generated on demand and is only kept on the server for up to an hour, so hotlinks won't work for long. (This is so free chicken images are taking up less space on the server minute to minute)

In other news...

• Coop expansion prices have been lowered to 700 each! Everyone who has already bought expansions would have received a refund on the difference.

As you may have noticed, the number of occupants in the Pullet Pool has been increasing steadily almost every day. I've recently taken a few measures to unclog the pool and making other "offloading" options more viable. Please be aware of these changes, as they may affect your decisions!

1. Chickens in the Pullet Pool will now be released by the system after they've been in there for 30 days. The logic for this is that 30 days in the pool (4 chicket cycles) is indicative that they aren't going to be picked up, and could otherwise end up stuck there indefinitely while newer releases show up.
2. The reward for full releases has now been raised to 50-60 eggs. From talking to people, I have learned that full release is strongly dispreferred by many. To make it feel slightly more viable for those whose decision is based on egg rewards, I have raised the release reward so it's almost always higher than pooling.
3. I changed the default Pullet Pool sort order to earliest - latest. It simply makes more sense for chickens that have been there longer to be the first to be considered for picking. Like Farmhouse sorting, your sorting preference autosaves when changed, so you can toggle this back to latest - earliest if you prefer.
4. Now, when chickens are released, their genotype is stored as a string (similar to what you see at the end of Chickrew morph links) that allows their original appearance to be recreated. Currently it's not accessible by anyone other than admins, but I may add the ability to retrieve the chicken's appearance at a later date.
5. [ADDED] One more change I've just made—I've doubled the likelihood of getting a chicket from the daily rewards. Hoping that this gives people more choice/manoeuvreability.

Thanks for your understanding! I'm open to discussion; I would like to know if you feel like any of these changes are terrible ideas (or if you think they're good ideas even). Any suggestions and thoughts can be sent in the Site suggestions forum.

Starting this month, we're donating a small part of the site's earnings to charity! I've put up an info page about our two supported charities and donation plan on this page.

The short version: If we earn AU$1500 or more in a month, we'll donate to SRS (a rural disability and aged care support charity), which lets us name a chicken with a sponsorship cert. People who bought eggs that month get to throw a name suggestion into the pool, and one name is raffled from the pool to be entered on the cert.

Check out our log of past charity chicken names! As of this announcement, we've donated once and named one chicken

Saint Chickolas has visited every Secret Santa participant's inbox and delivered their giftee's wishlist! I forgot to ask for block lists, so I used the on-site block list, but let me know if you have received a person you would rather not trade with and I will swap you around. And of course, let me know if you have not received one.

By popular demand...signups are open for the ChickenPet-themed Secret Santa—just read the rules and fill this form! The form will close on 7 December UCT, and assignments will be sent by the end of the day via this site's messaging feature.

The new gene set is here!

Try the new genes in Chickrew | Get the splicers at the Eggschange

Chuffed body Puff comb Pompom tail

As part of this update, accessory positioning has been revamped! Relevant accessories will now reposition (and sometimes resize) based on the chicken's comb shape, body shape, and other features.

Cluckulator, a breeding calculator

I started writing a breeding guide, then realised I could help people skip the math by making a tool that does it for you. Use the Cluckulator to:

• Calculate mate colours needed to produce the desired offspring colour
• View the full range of offspring colour possibilities for a given pair

Feature is still being tested!

(Yes, I'm still on vacation! I just needed something relaxing to do while I recovering from walking too hard lol)

16/11/2024 update: The answer has been found by @Azu! The gene name is Chuffed. GOOD WORK...everyone will be getting genes sometime on or after the 26th of November!

I will be on vacation until the 26th of November! Expect fewer updates (or even none). When I'm back, I'll be releasing 3 brand new feature genes. Here's the catch: I will only release them if someone correctly guesses the name of the new body gene before I'm back.

Hints:

1. It's a real word.
2. It starts with "ch". Surprise surprise.
3. It has one syllable.

Guess in the comments of this announcement! I will let you know when the word has been found (there may be a delay though). If somehow no one's got it by the time I come back from vacation, I'll start adding hints.

Rules:

1. One guess per person per UCT day. Keep it fun for everyone!
2. It has to be the exact word and not 1-2 letters off—there's not a lot of one-syllable words starting with "ch" so you should get it via numbers alone!

Pages are here! Every user can create up to 5 HTML/Markdown-formatted pages, linked directly from your profile. Chicken embeds, polls and user @ tags work there. Head over to your profile to create your first page.

As a side note, we will be opening the site to more users on 11/11 at 11am (make a wish...). There will also be an email-only open at an unspecified time before that.

Other recent changes:

• The new icon in the top right corner is a link that takes you straight to your profile. It uses the first flair badge in your badge ribbon.
• I've been fixing up nest hatching on the back-end, in an effort to deal with the pesky bug that causes eggs to lose their parents seemingly at random. I still have not figured out what is causing it, but I have tightened up the hatching mechanics, fingers crossed that that fixes it. please send a ticket if it happens to you.
• Released chickens now show up with their ID number in lists of relatives, instead of their name.

Halloween is my favourite not-holiday!

New accessories

Cape

Horns

Veil

New filters

Penumbra
(darkens chicken)

Will-o'-the-wisp
(flame overlay)

Try them at the Dressing Room | Buy at the Eggschange

As a reminder (since the previous announcement wasn't up for very long), trades have changed: currency is now deducted when the carton is created! Read Announcement#30 for more information.

Other recent changes

• Added forum search (check Forums to give it a spin)
• There's now a Recent Threads feed that aggregates threads with recent activity from all forums from the past 24 hours.
• Added guest block and notification badge toggles to Settings page
• You can now reply threads without bumping them. Simply check the "Don't bump" checkbox.

I just pulled the new trade system changes into the site after testing them for a few days!

Important: this update changes how trades work. Now, when you start a new trade or add a carton to a new trade, all currency (eggs, seed and chickets) will be deducted from your account immediately. This is to reduce the memory work needed to track every pending trade and keep your egg amount in your account above that until every trade is accepted (previously, a trade would simply fail with an alert if either member had insufficient funds to complete it).

Pre-existing trades have not been migrated to this system, and it will be noted in an alert above the trade if it has not been migrated yet.

This feature has been reasonably well tested, but there is nevertheless the possibility that something will break for you. If you lose any currency from a trade, please let me know in a ticket under the Refund Request category!

Other recent changes:

• There is now a search box to start a trade with any user from you trades page.
• Updated the Clucky Clicker script to block all clicking between when the previous round is solved until when the new batch of chicks is loaded. This hopefully prevents all the bugs associated with clicking during the load time.
• The Toyhouse world is now linked in the footer!
• Fixed the sanitiser to handle certain blocked elements without erroring out.
• Debugged retrieving user's "next username change" timestamp on the settings page
• Your chicken can now only pick up seeds from forests if stepping onto the forest tile cost you steps.