Announcements

As I'm sure most have realised by now, but to confirm beyond a doubt, the ChiaPet rebrand was, in fact, a prank. That said I'm really happy that players seem to be enjoying it, so I will be extending chia time till noon UCT on 2nd April, which should cover majority of everyone's April Fool's.

I've seen some questions about what will happen to the chia after the event. First, all chia will disappear on 2nd April (progress is saved in the chicken's data) so get your pictures before then! But it may return in some other exclusive form in the future...we shall see

I have some exciting news to share: We're rebranding!

Previously, ChickenPet was attracting a very narrow target market. Our research revealed that our chicken-focused branding was the root cause. To broaden our market share, we're branching out to a more relatable brand image with higher growth prospects.

You can now convert your chickens into chia pets by clicking the "Make chia pet" link on their profile. Worry not—the new chia pet will retain the characteristics of the original chicken, but now you can water it to make its chia grow. Chia can be watered every two hours, and they will grow through 5 6 phases. Try it out today!

We are confident that our brand will blossom under this new branding strategy, and hope that this will seed new gameplay experiences. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continuing support of ChiaPet as we navigate this exciting branding transformation. We hope you enjoy the rest of your day!

You can now gift eggs to fellow users! This is opt-in—enable it on your profile or settings page to start accepting egg gifts.

Note that gifts are not anonymous.

Make It Pop

Lumière wth an accent. (Greyscales the chicken, but keeps accessory colours.)

This was suggested by users! This filter is unsortable because it is applied underneath accessories.

Aura

Who needs a nightlight? (Adds glow behind the chicken.)

This filter is sortable; glow colour is affected by colour-changing filters placed before it. Only stacks up to 3.

In other news...

• New additions today: a page to view all your thread replies, Wheel of Hue's own full page, and a brand new dev alert subscription button!
• Site bugs now have a 50% chance of feeding chickens instead of a 100% chance like before. This is to prevent overloading the server with heavy requests.
• You can now sort your coop by SBP on the status page.

This is old news by now, but for those who missed it: You can now buy 7 expansions, taking you to a maximum of 240 chickens. Also note that expansion prices now plateau at 3500 , so all expansions from the 5th will cost that much. Happy hatching

Just letting y'all know a short while ahead just in case this impacts breeding plans:

• 2 new recessive genes will be released within the next few days. They are bred using 1. bar x half-lace and 2. bar x head.
• If you have any nests matching these at the time when the update arrives, there is a chance they will hatch as one of the new genes. Feel free to prep accordingly. (And yes, feel free to set up nests to try for the new genes ahead of time, too)

I appreciate you discussing the ongoing issues in a public forum, as the private moderation load for this issue has been very heavy. To clarify, the site will not take any direct action relating to the matter of chicken flipping or associated actions for managing one's buy/sale experience - do not send tickets relating to it, unless other existing rules have been broken. You are welcome to create resources for the site's general use relating to this.

However, there will be some UI and link changes in response to some of the thoughts shared in the thread.

The thread will remain available but will be made read-only 48 hours from creation, as I feel it has mostly run its course.

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

5 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