getting animals

[Medium rare bear]

how do i get goats sheep or chickens? none of these animals spawn on my map and traders don't sell them.

[gothelder]

The only way I have found them so far is to start the game with them as an added resource. Also, mine dont seem to be breeding, though they are in a cage together, AND I had two die. They all show as hungry, but they all have a trough with food in it.

[Medium rare bear]

oh well thanks, i guess i have to restart then

[tlsrace]

Animals will show up in bulk every now and then. When they do, try to tame them. Make sure you have a pen already. Also feed sheep and goats hay.

[Sparkless20]

You will get a message that a groub of animals has appeared on you map. As soon as you see that check the map borders and you should fin around 10 animals of the same type in different genders and ages. It can take some time tho. I have had my first one at the 8th summer day.

[Storm]

Troughs work. But be sure to take off meat eggs and cheese or it's the silence of the chickens

[Storm]

Found out the hard way you need both a pen and a barn or the winter will kill off most animals except dogs.

[Storm]

Oh and barn door is an epic fail, need a real door or it's 'outside' and they still die.

[Storm]

Handling the trough loading / changes needs to get bumped higher on the priority list. I just had most of my sheep die because the lazy goldbrickers did not put food out for them. I just got them through to spring, it got to be 40 so I put them out in the pen and they died in a day. That isn't right. I am bent right now.

[Storm]

AND HUNDREDS of Veggies in the larder, no excuse for this, I am banishing the lot of them.

[MEGADORI]

I am now in the forth year of my save and the only animals that ever appeared were two dogs and a looot of cows. No sheep, goats, or chickens :( Could it be random based on the map seed?

[Medium rare bear]

there's cows?

[Bloodcup]

yep..i had a cow just wander up to my settlement. but i couldn't find another one for breeding...

same with chickens..just wandered up.


My problem is that same as stated above..the darn people seem to forget to feed them ...even have one person with no other job than animals.

[Dagmar]

Don't worry about how many of each livestock animal you have. You only need to use the taming option if you'd like them to be someone's pet. The last thing you probably want to do is tame a bunch of rabbits into pets because they'll breed like mad and eat everything not nailed down... and as pets they go wherever they darned well please.

* Build a small (5x5 interior) roofed hut with a barn door (so they can go in and out).
* Install two troughs in the animal hut. Set them to High Priority.
* Install a brazier in the hut so they don't die during the first cold snap. Also set this to High Priority for the same reason. The barn door will keep enough heat in so they don't freeze.
* Build a stick fence around the front of the hut with a fence gate (so they can't get out and eat all your crops, because they will) to make a small yard so they can run around.
* Add the obligatory pen post in the yard or the hut and just leave all the animal types checked. You'll see the brief flash as the "room" is created.
* Make sure someone has the Animal Husbandry task set to a fairly high priority (like 3 or 2).
* Wait.

Basically, your animal husbandry person will go snag any livestock animals that appear on the map and drag them into the pen, where they will happily munch hay and produce whatevers. At the moment they breed asexually via abiogenesis, so two males, two females, one male... doesn't matter. They'll reproduce.

...but if you let them starve whatever was starving is all going to starve in the space of the same hour. Hence why you set the troughs to 'High Priority' and make sure there's plenty of hay. Make your life easier by selecting some of them for slaughter in the winter or late fall while there's not much else going on. Behold that the animals are smarter than your settlers and will stay inside the barn when it's too cold. ;)

[galadon3]

Originally posted by evildagmar:

Don't worry about how many of each livestock animal you have. You only need to use the taming option if you'd like them to be someone's pet. The last thing you probably want to do is tame a bunch of rabbits into pets because they'll breed like mad and eat everything not nailed down... and as pets they go wherever they darned well please.

Don't wanna nitpick, but since many ppl had been confused by the mechanic in the past; what you mean is TRAINING (that makes them pets).
TAMING is actually what you need to do to make a wild animal a domestic (not-yet-pet) one.

[NiceGuy]

Feeding the animals is a transport job NOT animal husbandry!
You need enough pet animals/people to do the transport and the trough needs to be very high priority. Has been said SOOOOOOOO many times.