Slime chunk with tower and multiple farms listed below all in same chunk:

slime
chicken
cow
pig
sheep
wheat
beatroot
carrot
potato

All farms are working with the exception of villager operated farms. In the case of the wheat and beatroot farms, farmer villagers were given 8 stacks of seeds before being introduced to the standard village type farm. In the case of the potato and carrot farm, I am using a design which prevents the villager from picking up the harvest and instead give him a single item to plant when a comparator detects a harvest has been collected.

The issue: When the chunk is loaded, the wheat/beatroot farmers will harvest one to two crops then stop without replanting. The two auto farms the farmers harvest but do not plant. When the chunk is reloaded (usually after a relog instead of F3-A) the farmers in the auto farms will plant but not harvest.

Troubleshooting steps - I have attempted the following:
Downloaded from server to local - no change
Changed difficulty to peaceful - no change
removed all other passive mobs - no change
decreased render distance to 2 - no change
Created new farm in adjacent chunk - no change
created new farm far enough away that chunk in question is unloaded - farmers start harvesting.

I suspected I was overloading the chunk, but I believe I have eliminated that theory when I removed all passive mobs except the villagers and set game to peaceful.

I can make my world available for download, including command blocks to TP to chunk in question.

I've tried searching on this issue with nothing related. Please forgive me if there is in fact an existing issue.
Currently discussing this on minecraft forum here:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/survival-mode/2634038-is-there-a-max-entity-per-chunk

and I'll link that back to here as well.