It seems to be that way for me, too; but I don't like having too many chickens, so I haven't tried to hard to get more.
Have you tried breeding them to get more? If they refuse to breed, then there might just be a lot of chickens already spawned on the map, taking up your space for farming them. Try searching in caves, ravines, and oceans for ones that got stuck.
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The good people, they always die. And the bad people do too...But the weaker people, the people like me, WE have inherited the Earth. -Morgan Jones
I've been able to get up to 15 or 16 chickens at a time, but after that, any other animals or mobs in the area start to despawn, which wasn't cool for all my multi colour sheep. Also if I got up to 15/16 and left the area for an significant period of time, whenever I got back there was usually a few missing, this is really annoying for any sort of breeding.
About 10 or so appears the limit for me as well. I have three-block deep 5x5 hole with chickens in. The population temporarily increased when I threw 30+ eggs on the walls, but some time later it was back to around 10 or 12 again.
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Is it a chicken or is it a duck? - It's a chuck, because dicken sounds stupid.
That or go into the Overworld and slay everything you find...except your chickens.
There is a passive mob cap, which is really annoying since animals wander into caves...and the ocean.
i'm playing in the tutorial world and I get to 12 chickens comfortably all the time. My farm seems stable with: 4 pairs of mating chickens with 4 babies, 1 pair of mating cows with 1 baby, 1 pair of mating pigs with 1 baby, 4 pairs of mating sheep with 4 babies, and 1 pair of sheep left non-mated. 1 pair of non-mating tamed wolves. Total animals = 34. If I mate the last pair of sheep at the same time as everything else, I seem to lose one or two (despawning or perhaps animals taking damage from overcrowding?). On top of those 34 animals, I still do have ample wild animals spawning in the general area; and sometimes spawning even inside the pens with my tamed ones. I can occasionally throw an egg a little ways away from the area of my pens and get a chick; but most eggs thrown result in nothing. I regularly kill all the wild animals I find and I don't try breeding my tamed ones again until after the babies have grown and I've killed them off. It seems to be working. However, any attempt to move the farm away from pens constructed by 4J seems to result in many of the tamed animals despawning whenever I go mining.
Have you tried breeding them to get more? If they refuse to breed, then there might just be a lot of chickens already spawned on the map, taking up your space for farming them. Try searching in caves, ravines, and oceans for ones that got stuck.
Problem half-solved.
That or go into the Overworld and slay everything you find...except your chickens.
There is a passive mob cap, which is really annoying since animals wander into caves...and the ocean.
Stay fluffy~