The robot actually hugs the chicken and makes it produce an egg, then it kills the chicken to gain meat. See, if the robot kills the chicken first to get the meat, you'd have to buy an egg all over again and that wastes resources. Or, you could have the robot hug the chicken and gain an egg for free without spending resources, then kill the chicken, and you'd still be gaining meat AND saving resources.
Viewing post in Autonomous robot rancher kills chickens
in the game though after the the chicken pops out the egg it would be faster to break the egg and get the meat that way and then wait until it can pop another egg again instead of having to wait for the new egg to grow up fully. Basically it's better to simply use human ranchers but I was just wondering if the robot ranchers killing the chickens instead hugging them and getting an egg and then grabbing the egg was a design choice or an accident