sick animals

[VANGUARD]

So it seems like I put off cleaning the hutch for too long and now several chickens are sick.
I picked up one to inspect it then tried to drop it to the floor where the hen just died in a spray of blood.
Don't really want to repeat that with the other two.
Any way to heal the poor things? :(

[Jethro]

Oh no! That’s pretty crazy. What happens to entire farms of animals that are scattered across the map and aren’t being tended to!? Do the animals eventually just die?

I thought about making a pen and grabbing a few animals but my house is literally right next to a farm. I didn’t see any feed in the troughs, and no clue what to even feed them.

[stevasaur]

Originally posted by Jethro:

Oh no! That’s pretty crazy. What happens to entire farms of animals that are scattered across the map and aren’t being tended to!? Do the animals eventually just die?

I thought about making a pen and grabbing a few animals but my house is literally right next to a farm. I didn’t see any feed in the troughs, and no clue what to even feed them.

Removing grass now gives Grass Clippings. You can get more by using a scythe to clear a 3x3 area down to the dirt.
I believe all animals can eat grass clippings for now.
(I only learned this because I always remove long grass from the place I'm going to plant my crops and suddenly my character started getting overburdened for seemingly no reason!)

[Jethro]

Ahh, makes sense. I forgot I had gotten grass clippings from digging up grass!

I figured there were different bags of feed scattered about that I needed to find.

[VANGUARD]

Do chickens even need feed right now?
The chicken coop got a feeding trough with some hay in it.
Every now and then I put in some mushrooms and berries I find but the only change to the content I see is that the stuff goes from fresh to stale and then to rotten.
Do they just eat so little I don't even notice the difference?

[Danger Girl Forever]

I have the same question. I clean the hutch every day I still have sick animals "exploding" lmao. Anyone know how to heal them?

[CitrusCircus]

Alas I have had this happen to, I found some turkeys in an animal tralier that were sickly probably because they had no water in there. The first ones I grabbed, I gave as much water as I could then went to put in them in there new home and they splat all over the ground when i dropped them.

I was able to either hold them in my hands to give water and pets and place them in either the roosting coop or back in the tralier without hurting them but 'drop' they died instantly.

I have been manually grabbing them from the coop to give them water each day and im hoping they will get better. Fingers crossed.

[VANGUARD]

Not sure about the current version but in 42.3 any sick animal that is put into the game world from a container or player inventory just dies instantly.
Animals probably can't die yet while inside a container, so they get sick instead, and death simply catches up to them once released back into the world.

[Xenomorph]

Originally posted by VANGUARD:

Animals probably can't die yet while inside a container, so they get sick instead, and death simply catches up to them once released back into the world.

The hutch counts as a container, I think, so yes, they can. I've found several dead chickens inside the hutches. Then they seem alive when picked up and die instantly when dropped.

This thread may explain why animals other then deer, wild rabbits and racoons are the only critters that don't die instantly when spawning since the last patch. It's a 🪲