Raising Livestock

[Armagenesis]

What do I need?
I finally found a few animals I can raise. So I thought it's time to try out the new features.

I figure I need feeding trough for food and water.
Chickens need a hutch.
But what about pigs and rabbits?
Do I need to build a shelter for them or can I just let them stay outside?
Are fences necessary to keep them within the livestock zone?

Some more questions:
Can animals drink tainted water? Or do they need clean water as well?

[Buwaro Elexion]

you can see what food they eat in game, no under the hood needed, if you click info, then click the little i in the top left it has all the info, note that some are incomplete(sows, but not boars, rabbits and rat/mice) also shows mating season and what conditions males attack other males

[Armagenesis]

Originally posted by stevasaur:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/595136312034462851/

It's not from a user called Rain, but I found some info at the bottom of this thread.

So chimkins can eat insects. Sweet.
Time to dig up worms.

[Pherdnut]

Back up your game regularly until they patch the cloning livestock thing. I've seen it with pigs and chickens.

[Liren]

Originally posted by Pherdnut:

Back up your game regularly until they patch the cloning livestock thing. I've seen it with pigs and chickens.

If that happens, debug menu will allow you to remove everything in a few clicks. Most computers seem able to handle the strain long enough to do that, and it can rescue your save file. You'll have to repopulate the entire chunk you're on, but it's better than starting over, IMO.

[Armagenesis]

Originally posted by Pherdnut:

Back up your game regularly until they patch the cloning livestock thing. I've seen it with pigs and chickens.

It happened once for me. I name all of my livestocks to keep track of them. And when I check the hutch, one of my hens got duplicated. Funnily though, it's back to normal on the next morning.

[Vex]

How do I empty a trough that is full of water or food?

Edit: Found it (just click on it) :)

[Big Don Vincenzo]

It's pretty OP atm, all the farm animals can just chow grass, so as long as you don't have five million of them you don't have to worry about food at all. Same with water, just make sure there is feeder that gets filled with water when it rains and they'll be good.
Essentialy: animals + patience = infinite food
Even the highly underestimated pigs are good. The litters are huge and if you turn breeding seasons off you can easily multiply one boar + three sows into 20+ pigs in a single reproduction cycle.

[leonneddr]

Originally posted by PureHTDz:

All animals will go under cover if it starts raining and most of them will head for shelter at night, it helps to keep them calm and lowers stress a lot quicker if they get spooked by zombies.
They do tend to be glitch tho, i had a full enclosure built for turkeys 1 males and 2 females with 1 baby, they headed into chicken coop at night to sleep and had been doing so for a few days every evening, plenty of food and water in troughs. Awoke the next morning to let them out at 6 am( my routine) and they were nowhere to be found..they had just disappeared. No holes anywhere in any fences. I had a metal mesh fence surrounding enclosure border and then a higher fence around that enclosure as well. The animal zone was within the metal fence.
They also seemed to be able to walk thru or glitch thru the fence somehow as i found them wandering in the car park area of my base, an required replacing multiple times.
Pigs tend to destroy walls(high log walls) which they can 2 shot, they even managed to totally destroy a red tool cabinet and a wooden crate with 1 shot when they got into my garage inside when i was repairing there enclosure. They still manage to destroy fence pens inside there animal zone, when they get a little stressed faster than zombies can, it gets annoying constantly having to repair fences or look for disappearing escape artist animals.

i am getting to the point that keeping them isn't worth it, having to lead animals to your base with rope leads or carrying 1 at a time because you cant load 2-3 chicken or 2 turkeys into a van that has 208 capacity, but you need a trailer for animals which are all attached to damaged vehicles is so unrealistic. I can load a few fridges into a van but not a few chickens. Your better of just killing them and butchering them for meat asap, an max out your foraging skill to get more food everywhere.
Hopefully some of these issues are fixed sooner rather than later it tends to detract from the emmersion.

You can unhitch the animal trailer, tow the damaged vehicle far enough to be able to hitch the trailer. There are also empty trailers sitting occasionally on a farm not hitched to anything.

[Armagenesis]

Originally posted by Big Don Vincenzo:

It's pretty OP atm, all the farm animals can just chow grass, so as long as you don't have five million of them you don't have to worry about food at all. Same with water, just make sure there is feeder that gets filled with water when it rains and they'll be good.
Essentialy: animals + patience = infinite food
Even the highly underestimated pigs are good. The litters are huge and if you turn breeding seasons off you can easily multiply one boar + three sows into 20+ pigs in a single reproduction cycle.

I don't have to worry about that atm. I have so many livestock I took from the farmlands southwest of Rosewood. I've been butchering over half of them for meat so that my ranch isn't overflowing.

Building shelter for the non-chickens is the biggest problem atm. Getting enough logs to build a makeshift barn is a pain in the ass frfr. My pigs are capped at 50-ish stress level because of it.

[BaJed]

Originally posted by DivineEvil:

At this point it seem pigs do not need anything other than troughs for feed and water.
They produce a lot of manure, but thether it negatively affect them if not cleaned, or can be used as material for fertilizer is unclear.

Fences are necessary. Without them animals seem to occassionally wander off the zone and detach from it, moreso if they're startled by the zombies. You can keep them inside the safehouse while you're building the fences, though you'd have to pet them regularly to relieve stress from being spooked by zeds attacking it.

Piglets seem to require the mother pig in the same zone to grow, otherwise it appears they're unable to feed and will starve eventually.

Just got a piglet from my recent run it grew on its own without its mother but has a debuff that says its needs its mother it might be different story for other mammals in the game.

[Phlegmatic]

Does anyone know how to assign an animal to a zone?
I have roped a cow from a neighbouring zone, walked it into a different (already existing) zone, and now want to assign it to that new zone. Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks in advance

[m@gicpanda]

Originally posted by Phlegmatic:

Does anyone know how to assign an animal to a zone?
I have roped a cow from a neighbouring zone, walked it into a different (already existing) zone, and now want to assign it to that new zone. Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks in advance

Should happen automatically when you enter the zone with a roped Animal and release it.

That said bugs etc. sooo the times I've done it I've had the zone window open while moving the animal into the zone and it popped into the list of animals.

[F1tgal911]

Do not get pigs, when they start to stress out they destroy all fences including metal ones. This has to be patched so bad.

[Cold Grave]

I don't recommend animals until the chickenpocalypse bug is fixed

[Minnzy]

Originally posted by F1tgal911:

Do not get pigs, when they start to stress out they destroy all fences including metal ones. This has to be patched so bad.

I've just discovered this and it's been 6 days, over 100 planks to repair the damage and they're still stressed despite having zero source of stress. Going to get a bit slaughtering now I think but it was a pain to move them so I tried not to.