I am working on an automated chicken farm. Things are going quite well and my prototype is working, but I am having a small issue that affects my efficiency.
For my kill step, I have pistons open up a stream of water that carries the chicken to a piston smasher area. This area has a ceiling of sticky pistons which push dirt, and a floor of hoppers which collect and distribute dropped items.
My problem is that chicken meat and feathers keep popping out the top & bottom of my contraption. About 90% gets collected, but 10% ends up on the factory floor. I want to eliminate this waste.
How can I stop the items from getting pushed through my walls? Am I using the wrong block (all the non-essential blocks are dirt for easy construction)? Do I just need to make everything 2x thick? Am I missing something? Is this just how Minecraft operates?
edit I am doing this on a 1.7.4 vanilla minecraft server
edit 2 Heres an image of my killing area. I removed a wood slab so we could see inside a bit better. Note that this is the off positon, chickens aren't ready to go in yet. Directly under the dirt being pushed is a whole floor of hoppers