Radioman just published a new video this morning where he's trying to create a market place and he built a custom crate and tried spawning a chicken inside of it. He eventually got it but I thougth it would be cool if eventually we could pick up and place chickens. So here's my suggestion
1. A new craftable item on the sawbench for an animal crate
2. animal crates can come in a few different sizes: one for chickens and other future small animals and another for larger ones, perahps for pigs.
3. picking up a chicken is done with the interact key.
4. active inventory item is suspended as you'd be holding the chicken with both hands ( I'd love to see this with the new player models otherwise you'd have a floating chicken infront of you )
Also, it would be nice to place items on book shelves. It seems the individual shelves do not yet act as snap points. The workaround is to place a wood plank in with the shelf