Lazy Zoo Keepers

[SpitefulFox]

Is there some trick I'm missing to getting my damn zoo keepers to do their jobs? I hire mountains upon mountains of them and the pens are still filled with poop all the time.

[Kasiornis]

Well if you look after them a little you may notice that they spend quite a lot of time cleaning the pens from animal poop, walking slowly from one to another. The bigger is the pen, the more animals in it - the more time a keeper will spend cleaning it. To speed up a process you may give each of them their personal work zone to ensure that some particular pens will be cleaned for sure.
Apart from that - they sloooooowly getting more experiened, raising their work speed over time. You may also try to optimize your Zoo movements, since you have only one Storeroom and they'll need to visit it then walk back to animal pens - you may consider building some subways to speed up the walking part. If you have a huge Zoo this can be a life saver.

[SpitefulFox]

Each individual pen has three entire zookeepers assigned only to that pen. The pens are still filled with poop. The inspector still keeps telling me I'm satan for being so mean to the animals. The vet still tells me the animals are too pooped up. I literally don't know what they want me to do other than hire literally a hundred zookeepers or just get rid of all the animals.

[Hawk]

This was an issue last time I played as well, happy to see it's still not fixed.

What I think it is, is there's no priority AI for the keepers so they're unable to tell when it's time to mess around and when it's time to work or what work to do when. They also can't tell what priority to do food or poop in. I also don't think they're able to tell which pen is in the most need of attention resulting in some pens being over maintained while others are virtually abandoned. Unable to tell when it's time to work, unable to tell which pen needs critical attention, unable to differentiate between food and poop needs results in inefficiency in every aspect. But mainly poop.

Add in slow walk speed and slow work speed and you end up in a poop avalanche they'll never fully clean up that just gets worse and worse.

OR if there is a priority system Poop is so far down the priority system that they'll mess around/go on break then actually clean poop. I don't know which is worse.

[SRT_Reno]

Having a similar problem. I have dozens of keepers, some only assigned to a single enclosure, which then has several other keepers also looking after it. It still fills with poo and my welfare score suffers for it.

The game keeps telling me to hire more zookeepers but I shouldn't need so many. D:

I've even tried hiring only keepers w/ high work ethic and it doesn't seem to help.

Keeper AI is definitely not the smartest. Person AI in general is a bit weird, especially w/ pathfinding. They won't walk behind buildings a good half the time and act like the tops of tall buildings are somehow blocking paths, as if the buildings are flat and not being interpreted as being in 3D space. x_x It's making planning my zoo a headache.

I love this game a ton already but it def still has room for improvement.

[Tacticus]

I only have 1 Keeper assigned to each pen, and have no problems despite having enclosures with 50+ animals pooping constantly.

I've discovered that if you fill the enclosure with plants and decorations the animals only poop on non-occupied spaces. So I leave a little space at the entrance for water (before I unlock Lakes) and the enrichment items that need access to function, and then fill every single remaining space in the enclosure with plants and grass. That way the animals only ever poop in a small zone right by the entrance. My Keeper has it all nearby and can scoop it up without having to do to much travelling.

The only times the Inspector complains about poop in my Zoo is when he arrives too early for my Keepers to start their work proper.

If you try this you might miss a space when filling the enclosure with plants. If that happens and an animal poops in that space you will get notified that the Keeper is unable to access the enclosure properly. All you do then is put a plant ontop of the space and it removes the poop thats there too.

Hope this tip helps.

[clim]

On top of all the great responses and tips, we have also added a new building and employee in the latest update! This employee can help the keeper pick up poop, giving the keeper less work to do :) And since they having dedicated buildings, they can be optimized more easily without the to-and-fro the store room.

[Lv1 Magikarp]

Originally posted by clim:

On top of all the great responses and tips, we have also added a new building and employee in the latest update! This employee can help the keeper pick up poop, giving the keeper less work to do :) And since they having dedicated buildings, they can be optimized more easily without the to-and-fro the store room.

This is great news, thanks a lot

[nocxsville]

Originally posted by clim:

On top of all the great responses and tips, we have also added a new building and employee in the latest update! This employee can help the keeper pick up poop, giving the keeper less work to do :) And since they having dedicated buildings, they can be optimized more easily without the to-and-fro the store room.

Great. What is the name of that employee and the building?

[Mizohican]

Yes please tell us, who is this employee? I am currently unable to find this new helper. What do I need to research to unlock him?

I also couldn't find any update notes from the devs about these new features. The last update note I could find was back in Oct 2023, which does not mention this new helper.