Chickens fit in one block spaces so you can put them in a cauldron and feed them through the gap of the second cauldron. They die from entity cramming and lava in the top cauldron stops some of them from escaping when they grow up. A combination of a hopper and minecart hopper filters drops into a furnace for cooking though it does collect feathers so I would suggest either an item filter or a copper golem to get rid of the feathers.

I’ve made one that is truly AFK; it just loops the eggs back into a dispenser and has an item sorter underneath for the feathers and meat.

True I did not think of that. I realize now that my design would catch the eggs too. I had thought that maybe a dispenser or dropper could breed the chickens though simply yeeting the eggs back into the cauldron would be smarter.

I’m sure it’s been done easier and better by someone else, but yeah that’s how I did it. And mine doesn’t use a cauldron, but same concept.

An item filter is what's stopping me from doing this, lol. I hate redstone. But it could be useful to collect the raw chicken and cook it later yourself. Just put it in a chest instead of a furnace. I more just wanted to see if I could breed the chickens between the gap of the cauldrons and was surprised that it actually worked!

So how do you do it without cauldrons then? I guess just having them in a one block hole would help and you don't actually need the blocks on the outside of mine though I think it might stop them from escaping. The main reason why I used cauldrons is so you can feed them through the crack.

Yeah, I didn’t know that was possible!

The redstone stuff is daunting at first, but item filters aren’t too bad honestly. If I can find some pics of my setup I’ll post here.

Let me see if I can put together a mockup for you, I’ll post pics and instructions.

Ok thanks though I can probably just look one up too. I do remember watching Mumbo's tutorial a while ago. Though I wanted to try to make my own.

Happen to have a link to the design?

Just posted this topic; https://sh.itjust.works/post/55803966

Here it is. Looking for a place to post the schematic but this gives a general idea. https://sh.itjust.works/post/55803966

Thanks! I saw your other post about it. Looks a bit too complicated for me though I might try it one day. Very cool farm though. Nice to have an AFK renewable food source.