Pasture Secrets

[wcbarney]

OK, maybe not secrets for anyone who has become proficient. But --

1. Build a pasture as soon as you are able after you've got a trading post; just keep it sitting empty waiting for the merchant to show up with livestock. In one of my semi-successful colonies the sheep merchant came right away after my trading post was built, but I didn't buy any sheep 'cause my lazy builders couldn't get the pasture built fast enough. The sheep merchant didn't come again for about 25 years!

2. Sheep are best: They start producing wool right from the get-go, so your tailor can make wool coats -- which last longer than hide coats. When you've got enough leather available (from deer and/or cattle) then you can also make warm coats which are long-lasting and warm. Continue to make wool coats too, 'cause you can sell these in the trading post for 15 units each. You will find that, with a couple of full 20x20 sheep pastures, you can hardly sell the wool coats fast enough.

3. Sheep are best -- again: The sheep herd grows fairly quickly, so you can split the herd every couple of years (requires 10 sheep to split the herd). A full 20x20 sheep pasture of 25 sheep uaually produces over 1200 -- sometimes as much as 1600 --food per year, in addition to all the wool. With only two herdsmen required, this is about the most productive food source in the game. Yeah it requires lots of space, but so does the gatherers hut which requires an entire forest and four gatherers to be most productive.

4. Cattle are 2nd bestt and chickens are in 3rd place. A full 20x20 cattle pasture of 20 cows will produce 800-1000 food per year, but their most important product is the leather. A full 20x20 chicken pasture of 65 chickens will produce about 1000 food per year (eggs & chickens),

5. Keep a pasture sitting empty! When the cow bug or sheep bug hits, then you are faced with the loss of the entire herd in that pasture, and it can take years to grow it back. Some say you should quickly slaughter the entire herd (by moving the slider at the bottom of the pasture window to zero) so that you at least salvage a couple thousand food from your lost herd. Some say you should quickly split your herd -- assuming you have an empty pasture to move the half-herd into, and thus lost only half your herd. But my advice, based on more than a half dozen attacks by the sheep, cow & chicken bugs, is to move your entire herd to the empty pasture you've left empty for just that purpose. When the bug hits, then quickly designate the empty pasture to receive cows/sheep/chickens -- whatever is necessary, then activate the empty pasture (press the dark "Work" button), EMPTY the infected pasture and deactivate it so that it now becomes your empty emergency standby pasture. You will thereby save your entire herd, and the only downside is that your two herdsmen have to walk a long way to work or else find someplace else to live.

[Operation40]

good tips except the first one - go ahead and buy your livestock without a pasture
...they'll sit around until you have a pasture ready. that's been my experience anyway..

[easternp]

this is great, Thank you for your advise

[Zlo-2]

Yes, first one is invalid. The trading post has its own pasture and animals stay there till u build a real one. Also, I think chickens are the best for the beginning of the game, cause they start producing eggs (food) right away.

[dcbobo]

great post. I just about do the same thing Granted it probably a slightly slower than some can come up with. But IMO it's one of the most stable, just be careful splitting herds if you haven't stocked alot of food yet.

[Phytoseiulus Persimilis]

The food production is by season and not year. The chickens have the advantage to produce food immediately with the eggs and you can also get chicken food after 1 season. For the two other pastures, you will have to wait for 1 to 3 years before the production will be maxed.

The sheep and cows are good for the long term, but if you need food because of a shortage, the chicken are better.

[dcbobo]

Originally posted by Mislesh:

Yes, first one is invalid. The trading post has its own pasture and animals stay there till u build a real one. Also, I think chickens are the best for the beginning of the game, cause they start producing eggs (food) right away.

yay for chickens that's the one i start with also. I've never gotten sheep before year 30 :( damn traders!

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by Operation40:

good tips except the first one - go ahead and buy your livestock without a pasture
...they'll sit around until you have a pasture ready. that's been my experience anyway..

Originally posted by Mislesh:

Yes, first one is invalid. The trading post has its own pasture and animals stay there till u build a real one.

You can keep animals in the trading post's mini pasture for a while (quite a while, really), but not forever.

I bought two sheep and forgot about them, and by the time I remembered, one had died. I put the last one in a pasture, but it ended up dying alone some time later. Poor sheep. :(

So, yes, you have plenty of time to build a pasture -after- you trade for livestock from a merchant, but if you have a pasture already built and waiting, you're less likely to forget them at the trading post, so it's still not a bad idea.

[wcbarney]

Thanks for all the response. I did not know that you could keep livestock in the trading post for a long enough time to build a pasture. I had read on this forum or in one of the guides on the day the game was released, and before I had started, that you had to get your animals into their own pasture right away or they would just flat disappear.

One more thing: Don't put pastures containing the same type of livestock adjacent to one another -- the livestock bug will quickly attack all the pastures with the same livestock type that are next to each other.

[Fimbultyr]

Sheeps dont reproduces themself faster than chicken. And i am not sure if really faster than cows.

[Percavil]

do you need to buy 2 animals for them to reproduce? i was only able to afford 1 chiken when the animal merchant came by like 12 years ago... but it died after a while all alone

[wcbarney]

The livestock reproduce asexually. I know I've read lots of posts that say otherwise, so that you have to buy at least 3 to be sure of getting at least 1 male & 1 female so that they can mate & reproduce. But I have bought just 1 sheep, or 1 cow, or 1 chicken and after years & years they finally expand enough to fill the pasture. Splitting the herd into separate pastures, when there are at least 10 sheep/cows/chickens + an empty pasture, will speed up the time it takes to get enough to fill up a max 20x20 pasture.

[TemplarGFX]

Im pretty sure when the livestock is in the Trading Post they remain until they die of old age. They do not reproduce though.