Animal Pens don't protect

[CzarinaOz]

What is the point of Animal Pens if they can be killed by wild animals when they are inside them? So that you know where they are? That's it?
I made a pen on the first day, making my own people suffer sleeping without a roof just so I could make a Pen and during the night they killed anyway. This is dumb. A pen is made to protect the animals - it does nothing but contain, which is worthless when your livestock is dead.

[QNecron]

While it's not immediately noticeable if you place torches or braziers near or inside of pens it will protect them*. You can validate this by watching the statuses on the animals when near a light/fire source.

* I've have issues where when it comes to chickens this wasn't the case.. but in my last few plays it's been fine (crosses fingers).

[Jermarlie]

^ Torches, braziers, statues (idea being they work a bit like scarecrows), and being close to settlers protects animals from predators.

The varying efficacy of pens is pretty realistic. In the game and in real life, certain animals like foxes are always going to find a way in. Smaller, more vulnerable animals like chickens need more protection than cattle, who will only be targeted by larger predators.

Foxes and polecats can go through fences and gates. If you want to protect your animals, especially the small ones, they need to be behind walls. Early game, pens alone really only work for large animals that won't get targeted by small predators. You can go the route of putting torches around your pens and/or only building them in central areas where your settlers will be moving around a lot, but I think the ultimate goal is to eventually build defensive walls all around your settlement, and have the pens inside that.

[Kaelroth]

I just build a pen that can't be reached without going through a walled door first. If you want your pen to still look 'natural/realistic' (meaning surrounded by fences rather than full-sized walls) you can either put the pen for your vulnerable domesticated animals on a plateau or a sunken area that can only be reached by walking through a door.

Personally, I usually make a two story building that spans both levels and put a staircase inside and a doorway on both levels.

[Stoney]

When you've got to the point where you have walls around your settlement this is no longer an issue :)

[Kaelroth]

Originally posted by Stoney:

When you've got to the point where you have walls around your settlement this is no longer an issue :)

Some of us build pretty expansively, so that can often take a very long time. I had forgotten about my chicken coop briefly when I broke a hole in a wall for building a more permanent structure and half a dozen polecats immediately rushed through the break and killed 10 of my 18 chickens before I was able to hunt them down or replace the hole in the wall.

Needless to say my suggestion in my post above instantly became my standard practice whenever I start a pen for chickens.

[msor]

Pen does not protect animals. Pens exist only to keep your cattle in one place, so you don't need to go to the other end of map for milking.

[galadon3]

Pens kinda protect the animals if you put lightsources like torches down around it. The lightsources keep the animals save and the pens keep them near the lightsources.

[wolfpost]

I am having no problems with the pens other than for my chickens. They seem to die when winter comes no matter what I do. I even built a hen house out of wood and placed a brazier inside of it and the dam chickens still died the second day of winter.

[galadon3]

Guess they are just too easily scared, saw the first snow in their life and their hearts gave out.

Honestly no idea, I never bother with chicken, they need the specially cooked animal fodder while pretty much everything else just eats straw and the only thing you need em for is pigment (needing eggs) to make pictures, so I save myself all the hassle and just buy the pigment if I want somebody to be artistic.

[Kaelroth]

Odd. My chickens and tamed pheasants are perfectly happy with just the hay I provide them. The only animals I give fodder to are wolves. Dogs would probably eat fodder, but they can go through doors and will eat whatever they want in your food stores. I suspect also probably cats/polecats/foxes need fodder too, but I don't keep them since they kill chickens.

[feb68]

It's just like in life, for a fox, a fence is not an obstacle, only a blind fence will protect chickens. At the very beginning of the game, you only need sheep for wool, no one will eat them in the pen, and dogs for transportation