Rancher

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Welcome to the Ranch! As a Rancher, your job is to look after and breed various animals in the Ranch. Currently only Chickens are implemented for this, however others may be developed further down the line. With a little love and attention, the Rancher can harvest certain produce and items not available otherwise, and also providing an alternate way to producing chemicals and ore.

The main aspect of Ranching, is breeding and evolution. With the correct feed, affection and time, your flock can diversify into useful (And cute!) chicken breeds, that can produce alternate goods or fill an alternate purpose. Chickens are closed source, and as such, their mechanics are still being discovered. Don't be afraid to experiment, and don't discount your own experiences! Information on this page may be outdated, or incorrect, so don't be afraid to discuss!

The Ranch

Your workspace is most of the time located directly attached to Botany, or very very close. Botanists do not have access to your exclusive chicken club, so if you need assistance feeding them, you may have to lock the door open if you plan on leaving for a long time. You do have access to Botany, as you require specific feeds for your chickens. You can either grow the plants yourself, or plead in despair as all of the trays are claimed for weed.

You have the following equipment available to you within Hydroponics and the ranch:

• Plant pots with status light meters. Feel free to move them to a more aesthetically pleasing formation, then use a wrench to fix them to the ground.

• A seed dispenser, which can be hacked to provide some especially interesting selections.

• A GardenGear vending machine, containing your standard equipment like produce satchels and plant formulas.

• A PlantMaster Mk3 machine, which can extract seeds from produce as well as infuse seeds or splice them.

• A reagent extractor, which can extract reagents from produce. Also has built-in storage tanks.

• A CheMaster 3000, used to turn extracted reagents into pills or bottles.

• Chicken Enclosures which are constructed out of Reinforced Railings (Constructed by using a steel rod on a railing), which prevent chickens from passing under them. Default Railings are bypassed by chickens.

• An Egg Incubator in each Enclosure, which after a short time will hatch the egg placed inside. This can be scanned, and constructed by the Mechanics team.

• A Nesting Box in each Enclosure, however unlike the Egg Incubator these can be dragged around, and purchased from a GardenGear.

Chickens

Bock, bock, chickens, feathered friends that, while tangential to your main agriculture duties, provide cluckloads of fun. Chickens provide plenty of eggs, and can also be butchered directly into chicken nuggets, if you're willing to do such a fowl act. All the chicken breeds can also provide unique eggs. But most importantly, they are cute and ex-hens-sively pettable!

Chickens are under what's called "closed source". That means that while you won't find much info about these feathered friends on the public GitHub, you're free to share info about them with others. Because of this there may be information yet undiscovered, or mechanical values that are yet to be determined. Why not experiment?

Getting Started

To start raising chickens, you first need to put an egg into the chicken egg incubator. Every map either has an incubator lying in Hydroponics somewhere, or a dedicated Ranch department room. As for eggs, one always spawns on each Egg Incubator expressly for chicken rearing. If you need more, it's usually easiest to ask for some from the Chef or order a Meat, Eggs, and Diary crate from Cargo. It's also possible to start with an egg as a trinket or even grow your own.

After sitting in an incubator, eggs become chicks. Chicks eventually grow up into either a hen or a rooster. Both can eventually die of old age.

Almost all the time, your chickens will grow up into hens. Hens occasionally lay eggs if there is an available nesting box around; there are some in the GardenGear, and the eggs should be cleared out every so often because hens do not like nesting boxes overcrowded with eggs. Eggs are an important ingredient in many dishes, and given that each egg can become a new hen, they are essentially a renewable, theoretically infinite source of eggs. Hens are quite passive; if you attack them, they tend to just try to run away.

Chicks can also become roosters, if--and only if--the egg in question came from an hen. That means you eggs you start with, eggs you get from the Kitchen, and other places won't give you roosters! Roosters don't lay eggs, but they do sit on eggs in nesting boxes, allowing them to hatch, with a high chance of passing on their genetics to the resulting chick. Roosters are also highly defensive; if you attack a chicken, all the roosters who witness it go after you, just like with Monkeys.

Chicken Tending

All the while, chickens need food to eat, specifically feed! To get feed, simply insert some sort of food, such as corn, into the chicken feed grinder. Then put the resulting feed on the floor. Different feeds may result in different chickens.

There's more to hunger than simply keeping your flock of fowl alive; keeping your chickens happy and well-fed has many benefits. Behaviour such as egg laying and hatching can be accelerated by keeping your chickens happy! To see the effects, every time you pet a chicken it will either ignore you or cluck. If it clucks happily, it would have laid an egg, or hatched an egg when it reaches that part of it's routine. In otherwords, if your chicken is clucking constantly when you pet it, it will lay a lot more eggs than a chicken that barely clucks at all!

Name	Generation	Chicken Sprite	Egg Sprite	Evolutionary path	Favourite Food	Prerequisites	Description	Cuteness
White Chicken	0			Brown, Glass, Henk, Silkie	Rice	Hatch white eggs, from White hens, the Kitchen, or a Meat, Eggs, and Dairy crate from Cargo	White chickens lay white eggs, however if they are happy they will lay brown eggs instead.	5
Henk & Henkster	1st			N/A	Unknown	Feed White Roosters bananas, and let the Rooster hatch them in a nesting box.	Henks & Henksters honk occasionally, and produce Egg?s which are actually water balloons, which are not treated like eggs at all.	8
Silkie Chicken	1st			N/A	Synthmeat	Hatch Silkie eggs, obtained by feeding White Hens Apple feed.	Silkie hens lay Silkie eggs, but otherwise behave as standard.	8
Black Silkie Chicken	1st			Selkie	Delicious-Looking Apples	Hatch Black Silkie eggs, obtained by feeding White Hens Delicious Apple feed.	Black Silkie hens lay Black Silkie eggs, and outside of being criminally cute are unremarkable. An apple a day keeps Head Surgeon away!	8
White Silkie Chicken	1st			N/A	Synthmeat	Hatch White Silkie eggs, obtained by feeding White Hens Apple feed with Methamphetamine as an additive.	White Silkies hens lay White Silkie eggs, and outside of their very existence being a terrible pun are unknown to have any exceptional properties. Who needs doctors when you can doctor food instead?	9
Void Chicken?	1st			N/A	Unknown	Hatch Void eggs, obtained by making White Hens vomit. Chicken feed is one way of doing so.	Void Hens lay Void Eggs, which have two very interesting effects. Consuming a void egg will shrink you in size for 10 seconds, causing you to take double Brute and Burn damage during this time. This is for a very good reason, because you can run through doors like a Critter during this time! An incredibly accessible and potent egg, just don't get caught or you'll be in for a world of pain!	1
Brown Chicken	1st			Gold, Spicy, Raptor, Synth	Chili	Hatch brown eggs, obtained from happy White hens.	Brown chickens lay brown eggs by default, Raptor and Spicy eggs if fed Meat or Chillies, and an impossibly happy rooster can hatch a brown egg into a gold chick.	6
Glass Chicken	1st			Glass 'BEAKer', Stone	Unknown	Hatch glass eggs, obtained by feeding White hens Clear Corn feed. (Clear corn is a mutation of Corn)	Glass chickens lay Glass eggs as well, which can be injected with chemicals and hatched to become a Chemical filled glass chicken, or thrown and shattered which creates glass shards. (You monster.) Any glass chicken or chick shatters when grabbed, so DO NOT under ANY circumstances grab them.	7
Glass 'BEAKer' Chicken	1st+			N/A	Unknown	Hatch a Chemical Filled Glass egg, obtained by gathering a Glass Egg from a Glass Chicken, and injecting it with 5 units of a pure chemical.	Glass BEAKer Chickens are incredibly interesting and useful. For starters, their blood is pure chemical, and gradually regenerates over time up to 50 units. They however are affected by this chemical as it's in their bloodstream. This can lead to some amusing, useful, or downright deadly and foolish applications. Extracting their blood will give you a 60/40% mix of blood and the chemical. Glass BEAKer Hens will lay Chemical Filled Glass eggs with their respective chemical.	4
Synth Chicken	2nd			Robot	Unknown	Hatch Syntheggs, obtained by feeding Brown chickens Synthmeat feed.	Synthchickens lay Syntheggs, which can be eaten for an energy boost! Alternatively they lay Robot eggs if fed any feed with nanomachines additives.	6
Stone Chicken	2nd			Ore	Unknown	Hatch Stone eggs, obtained by feeding Glass Chickens any feed that contains THC (Injecting food with THC before inserting into the feed grinder works, as does splicing Cannabis into other edible plants.)	Stone Chickens... Yikes, they are nasty. Ugly on the outside, pretty on the inside. They can be smashed open with a "Big Ouchie" (attack that deals 10 or more damage) to harvest their Geode interior, yielding Plasma Glass. Of course, don't let the other chickens see... They'll be awfully upset.	2
Golden Chicken	2nd			N/A	Unknown	Hatch Brown eggs with an impossibly happy Brown Rooster.	Golden Hens lay golden eggs! These do not hatch but can be sold for a lucrative profit. Also they're pretty, and a sign of a professional rancher.	9
Spicy Chicken	2nd			N/A	Unknown	Hatch Spicy eggs, obtained by feeding Brown chickens chili feed.	Spicy chickens are capable of breathing fire and suffer no harm from being lit up themselves, so be careful not to provoke them. They lay spicy eggs as expected, but can be butchered for Spicy meat. Also they're very cute, and definitely not a Pokémon, and should not be used to set up a private gym in the hellburn. Bok?	9
Raptor Hen & Tiercel	2nd			N/A	Unknown	Hatch Raptor eggs, obtained by feeding Brown chickens meat feed. (Synthmeat DOES NOT work!)	Raptor hens lay Raptor eggs as expected, and are INCREDIBLY CUTE. This is a ploy however, because Raptor Males are called Tiercels instead of Roosters, and for good reason. They're assholes. They will attack anything and everything that is not a Raptor nearby. Yes, this includes you. Yes, this will kill you, and the rest of your non-raptor Chickens. They are exceedingly deadly, fairly resilient, and can crit people in 5-10 seconds. If you're breeding these and you're not an antagonist, be very careful. It is possible to tame raptors to ignore you, if you pet them while they are babies!	10
Selkie Chicken	2nd			N/A	Fish Filets	Feed a Black Selkie fish filets and hatch the resulting egg in an underwater enclosure.	Ah, tuna, the chicken of the sea. These chickens can only breathe underwater, so be sure to fully flood their pen before hatching an egg. Their eggs can be eaten for the Aquatic Biology buff, which heals suffocation damage in water but deals it on land. Perfect for making it to the shuttle on a hellish Oshan round.	7.7
huOnkHoNkHoeNKs	2nd			N/A	Unknown	Make Henks extremely unhappy.	Oh god, what have you done. You spent all that time getting Henks and this is what you do to them? I don't even know what eating one of their eggs does to you but you absolutely deserve it.	0
Ore Chicken	2nd+			N/A	Unknown	Hatch an Electroplated Stone egg, obtained by retrieving a stone egg and taking it to the Arc Electroplater often found next to the Nano Crucible and plating it in a material. To use, insert one refined material Block/Ingot into the plater, and then insert the egg.	Arguably one of the most interesting and harder to obtain chickens, these chickens inherit the properties of the material (MatSci nerds testing required), and will hatch eggs that inherit this material. This can be used to obtain ores without mining (after an ore sample has been acquired of course), or create CONCERNINGLY DEADLY CHICKENS. Erebite and Cerenkite as examples, as these will inherit the Radioactive and EXPLOSIVE properties of their material. Again, if you do this with dangerous materials and you're not an antagonist exercise caution.	3
Robot Chicken	3rd			N/A	Synthmeat	Hatch Robot eggs, obtained by feeding Synth chickens feed with nanomachines as an additive.	Robot chickens are a breed you don't want to create comPULSively, as they have a couple of interesting effects. Their eggs cause MASSIVE EMP pulses that will destroy lights, interfere with firelocks, cyberhearts, equipment batteries, headsets... even cyborgs! These are NOT eggs you want to take a bite of lightly! Seriously! If you're not an antagonist and you take a bite, do so with great caution. The roosters themselves are an angry bunch, and if provoked will cause EMP pulses when they attack. A great breed to consider if you're having a problem with aggressive cyborgs. Also the first 3rd generation chicken to be discovered.	2
Space Chicken	N/A			[Secret!]	Unknown	It's not gonna be easy to find this bird; you might even need to go find some things from space.	The first of the four secret chickens. And hoo boy are these fun. Firstly, killing this chicken will cause it to rip through dimensions to return to it's place of birth. This will cause a similar effect to a flashbang to anyone near it's death, and it will reset it's anger and happiness. This is the same for all four of the chickens. They're all unique, and only one can ever exist, if another egg is hatched it will be unviable and empty. additionally, if the Space chicken is a hen, the Time chicken will always be a rooster and vice versa. The Space egg itself if eaten gives you 10 seconds of RAPID teleportation like Port but much faster, an incredible speed boost, and a silhouette trail as you run around. While this is VERY fun, it does cause sparks as you teleport! Be careful of welding tanks and fire alarms!	∞
Time Chicken	N/A			[Secret!]	Unknown	Time is really just a twist on space.	Follows the same behaviour as the Space Chicken, the Time Chicken also has a silhouette trail itself. The Time egg gives you 10 seconds of the same speed boost, the same silhouette trail, but instead of teleportation you return to where you ate the chicken egg when the buff expires! You are stunned briefly when this happens, and this does cause a spark, don't eat it next to a welding tank or it will explode when you travel through time! Eating cumulative eggs refreshes this buff, which can lead to some very amusing shenanigans...	9999...
Spacetime Chicken & Timespace Chicken	N/A			[Secret!]	Unknown	It's all in the name.	Hoo boy. These chickens are CUTIES. They follow the same behaviour to the Space and Time chicken. The egg effect is determined by the name of the hen. The egg effect gives you 1 minute of EGG POWER. This gives you RAPID regeneration of Brute, Burn and Toxic, to the point that it can outpace one person beating you with a fire extinguisher. It also gives you X-Ray vision, and additionally, if it's a Spacetime Hen, it will give 10 seconds of the Space egg effect, and the Timespace Hen, 10 seconds of the Time egg effect. These eggs are incredibly good, and a great get out of jail free card if you're critically wounded.	ℵ-infinite

Don't be afraid to experiment, due to Chickens being closed source nobody can be 100% certain if any information is correct. Please report any interesting findings for experimentation!

Get Clucked: Antag Rancher

You're a Rancher, and you're an antagonist, what can you do?

Want to infest the station with raptors and make Jurassic Park? Plant some rice, get some monkey meat from the Chef, and make the rice and meat into feed. To get raptor eggs, you need to get a white chicken to lay a brown egg, hatch that brown egg, and get the resulting brown chickens to eat feed made from meat. Receiving rice feed and petting increase chance of a white chicken giving a brown egg, so pet the shit outta them and don't skimp on putting down rice feed. Once you've a brown chicken, let it eat all the rice feed, and then cover the ranch with meat feed. Pet the shit outta the brown chicken too, because that also increases the chance of getting a raptor egg, make sure there is meat feed on all the tiles on the pen. You should get raptor eggs soon.