Why do my chickens keep dying?

In order to get a constant supply of food and feathers, I decided to set up a simple semi-automated chicken farm, but for some reason, my chickens keep dying. Why is this? Here are the details:

The dispenser is triggered by a rapid pulsar. This way, approximately every 16 seconds a new chicken is spawned, until I run out of eggs. The chickens float on a 1-layer thick water surface to allow collecting eggs:

As you can see the floating area is about 2x10 blocks large.

There used to be many chickens in these containers, dropping an egg every few seconds. Then, they all died (I could collect meat instead of eggs). Luckily, I had a batch of eggs, so I refilled the dispenser and got around 20 chickens out of it. Leaving the farm for a while and coming back left me with just 2 chickens.

How can I avoid these mass extinctions?

Solution 1:

The issue I see is (especially on SMP) Mobs are loaded before blocks (last experienced this on 1.2.4) so they move before the walls/blocks load. I have lost many a chicken this way.

also this is made worse on SMP as the chunks are loaded/unloaded much more often.

Edit: should have mentioned, there is a fix for this in the next release, but until then, the only way is to stay with your birds at all times.

Edit 2: the only fix I can recommend is to replace all the wood with glass and hope for the best, as you are on SMP I would also hide this whole thing in case it is a chicken hunter, not a bug killing them.

Solution 2:

I have seen this on the server I play as well. My suggestion is that you create a chicken coup with a water flow that pushes the chickens away from the walls.

My design is pretty simple. I create a square building somewhere between about 9-15 blocks in width. Continue to use the signs to build a water level, but instead of creating perfectly still like you did, simply place source blocks at each corner of the square room. The water flows will then push all the chickens to the center where they will not try to walk through walls and either escape or suffocate.

Alternate with buffers.

Solution 3:

I have had a chicken farm running for 6+ months, with never an issue like that. The biggest difference between mine and yours, is the water. My water is as follows (this is a side view)

X        X
X        X
X        X
XSWWWWWWWX
XXXXXXXXWWWWWWWW
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


X-> Rock/Dirt/Glass
S-> Water source block
W-> Water flowing from source block

I have never had an issue like you describe. Doesn't answer "why" they're dying, but answers "how to avoid this in the future."

As for why they are dying, I haven't a clue.

Solution 4:

I have been starting my own automatic egg farm going to eventually upgrade to a chicken tender farm but I recently changed the water from flowing from 2 corners of my 9x9 suspended room which was working perfectly fine to a still water by surrounding all sides with solid sources. I started adding the chickens just like i did the first time (Killed them all off to make it easier) but noticed they did not last more then a minute. I went into the water flow room under the chickens that pushes drops to the center and noticed they where taking damage on the signs holding up the water. I am not sure what causes this but it might be worth trying to make the water 2 deep or making the water flow by using a source block from each side.