I, for one, find it a bit jarring how chickens in a hatchery act more like robots than living chickens. I like to think that it would work if a chicken, instead of always flapping their wings, would sometimes check to see if a solid entity or hatchery chicken is within a certain range and turn their heads to look at it. Even better if they twist their body a bit as well. Another more audacious idea would be to have chickens occasionally escape a hatchery. This is, of course, a low priority feature, but it would definitely add to the pseudo-realism present in the rest of the mod.

They only reason I did do this originally is because of turning the chickens AI off, and they technically aren't a true entity. Its just a rendering of an entity. I can give them a little more actions, but will prolly only set it a config option as this causes more lag. Which is what hatchery try's to combat.

I understand that's the primary purpose, I was just hoping there was some way to make them more alive without sacrificing too much. A config option for something like this would be awesome.