Cows/ barn bug revisited (Nothing produced: no milk, no meat)

[tomh]

Problem: Eventually all my barns stopped producing anything. No milk and no meat anymore.

Reason: Cows escape their grazing area (because you can't close it off completely). Rogue cows run all over the map and eventually into the city where they can get stuck in a gate. Their herder can't get them free from there.

Because the cows are stuck, the barn remains empty and doesn't produce milk and meat anymore.

Workaround: After removing the gate under wich the cows are stuck the herd goes back to the grazing area or a herder fetches them.

NEVER delete the barn while the cows are still stuck. If you do, they won't be able to get free even if all walls/gates are removed!

[Urkman]

The gate bug got me stuck for a couple days. As soon as I read about the gates, i deleted them and everything started up again. Feels like cows are categorized the same as wildlife?

[tomh]

Hm, no idea. Sometimes cows manage to pass gates without problems which I never saw bears or other wildlife do.

[Ninjafroggie]

Alternatively, you can enclose the grazing area AND barn within the fence, so the cows never have to leave

[Gorlos]

Fences workaround for now:

Leave gap to 1st fence that cows can move to barn, then build a second fence around the gap and the barn.

[tomh]

Neat trick to prevent the problem from happening - not very useful if your cows already gone rogue... ; )

[Rooter]

I dont bother with fences, especially as you need to relocate grazing regurlarly to sustain food.
I even graze over farms, no ill effects as far as I can determine. If the farm is fenced you cant do this.

[tomh]

What I did is I built the fence all around my arborist fruit trees which is a huge area and left access from the barn (across the field).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2850530265

[ADMIRALPAIN]

Saving and then loading also resets the cows behaviour and they'll return to their barn. (which is kinda painful since the game has crazy loading times)

Got all of the above mentioned problems as well. But as stated above you gotta move your herd anyway once they've chewed their field empty.

Aside of that, everything on barns is bugged as hell, giving milk, slaughtering cows, max herd size, ect. That entire building is a bugfest

[tomh]

I've not had any more trouble since I've fenced in my farms. Only thing is occasionally I have to re-activate milking.

I even saw cows go rogue (I got NO gaps in the fence, just a couple of the fence gates!) and herders bringing them back through the little gate on the wooden fence.

[ADMIRALPAIN]

yeah same here, i've entirely removed fences, now it works

[tomh]

Seems cows can walk INTO fence a but not OUT OF them (makes them stuck). Weird.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that all my cows that didn't currently belong to a barn are finally gone. No more random herds stuck in my village or cows wandering lost across the map. It only took like 70, 80 years... No idea what happened to them, but I'm sure they're in a better place now. lol

[southmann]

I have found out that it is enough to leave a gap somewhere in the fence. No matter where. If there is a gap, they go through the gates like people.