Henk and Henkster

[Kotlol]

You shouldn't be raising that many chickens, focus on maybe 2 or 3 from a certain species until you get the species you want and then raise a ton.

Indeed that's the point, but the problem with it is the constant babysitting... also the breeder's guide doesn't say: "You need to give banana feed to a rooster and have them hatch eggs with 50%" It just says : FEED BANANA. 
Also the water chickens require you to make an aquarium, this means you need engineering and mechanics to make this route wich is already gonna be hard with limited resources to get what you need.

It's not like chemicals where if you mess up it's an OH WELL... or Botany where if your plant aint well enough it's an OH WELL.
Good botanists and chemists lost time but can reobtain the resources from scratch in less then 5 mins flat to start over.

With Rancher you need the right feed, right chickens and such. And something like a RAD STORM will set you back horribly, cause chickens are effected by rad storms.

While I am glad at the multiplue pens...my problem with rancher is that infact it's boring to start with, making all the feed and waiting for chicks to grow up.
Comparing this to Botany... can start getting desired effects in the 1st 5 minutes of starting.
Or chemistry that can start mixing right away. The rancher has to WAIT. They have almost nothing to do in the meantime, cept fishing if they got a portal or place to fish or Trimming Dolly for wool that does nothing yet

While the mid game it is very intensive baby sitting to getting desired effects.
And if you want to do something like a raptor invasion.. well good luck that no one tells security you are breeding raptors and killing them. (And if you do it off ranch, good luck keeping an eye on it)

So slow start, invisible RNG where the pay off is "hope to see it happen", Unclear instructions that if you do wrong wastes a lot of time and resources and if you wanna do something sneaky, it gets really hard since it's all slow and takes time.... makes Rancher kinda unappealing. While some have amazing pay offs... alot of RNG hurdles have to be overcome.

Imagine your shift working on a chicken type to have the right feed that botany had to make for you and just when all seems well..
A rad storm comes in and mutates the chicken that it escapes into space... thus having you to start mostly over. INFURIATING! And it's the only job where this happens... (yes you can catch the chicken and take it away in a cage and keep feed on you, but that's still 1 chicken surviving the rad over your 6 other chickens)

Either way... it's not as rewarding as let's say botany or art sci.