Cattle and Chickens dying off?

[TucanSam]

I had the opportunity to buy chickens and cattle from a merchant that visited my town. Unfortunately, I was only able to buy a few of them at a time due to my unpreparedness for them (I mainly focus on using the Trade Market as a sort of semi-storage for my food as I have an overabundance of it, a problem I am more than happy to have as it lets me fuel outrageous population growth).

I bought four cows at once and placed them in a pen. It went well for a while, so I moved them to a bigger pen in the hopes to gain more leather/beef when the population rose. Suddenly they started dying off for no reason. They weren't being harvested, as their numbers hadn't reached the max yet. It rose from four to six, then dropped to 0 without me knowing what was going on. I looked in the help section and it mentioned diseases happening to herds, but I didn't see any notification (not sure if you get one) or any particles depicting disease.

Then a merchant with chickens came and, after having successfully raised two herds of sheep for their wool and mutton, I bought two from him and gave them a small pen. Went fine for a while, was getting eggs normally. Then one randomly died off. And then the other.

Both instances of herd loss came during the winter. Is this a normal thing? Do animals normally die more often in the winter and it was only my stupidity of buying a small number that caused the herd to be unable to withstand it? Or was there maybe a disease and the weather ground somehow made it hard to see? Anyone else have this issue/know what I have been doing wrong?

I have well over 30 sheep and none have died off this way so far.

[hackersmurf]

For chickens, you should always buy at least 4 to start out because they die pretty easily, 2 can easily die without ever breeding. (some people are successful with just 2 but imo, they got lucky). :)

As for the cows, no idea. You did have herdsmen, right? Because I heard they won't breed without them (don't know for sure myself). Otherwise, it sounds like disease but you should have gotten a notification if you didn't turn off that option.

[TucanSam]

I figured low numbers probably didn't help. I bought I think 5 or 6 sheep when he came. I assumed chickens would breed faster, but that's my own fault I guess haha.

Yeah, I had herdsmen for the cows. I think I had 2 at the time because of the size of the pen. They bred fine for a while, then just started dying off. I haven't messed around with any of the settings since the game installed, so unless that option isn't enabled by default I'm not sure what happened.

[Maverick]

Just thought some on this. Was the slider all the way to the right?

Also, can we have an image of the pasture, the information window, general town statistics and profession windows.

[TucanSam]

The slider was all the way to the right, yes. As for the windows, since this all happened a bit ago and I have moved on in the game I can't really give you any specific information from the point. I could show the chickens, but I'm afraid that was just my own stupidity causing that other than a game bug.

[Wise Joe]

I only buy two of each kind of animal and they are the "seeds" that fill the rest of my pastures. I have never had the chickens die off, and I only buy 2.

However, I did have this happen a couple of times to my cows. I couldn't figure out how to reverse the situation and all of the cows in that one pasture died off. I wasn't watching it, I just noticed the herd was getting smaller when I looked at it now and then. Also, if I remember correctly as this happened a long time ago, when I would check the pasture I would notice the slider bar would not be far to the right. I don't know why, since I wasn't changing it. I would slide it full to the right, only to look later and it was somewhere in the middle again.

The pasture eventually emptied and I think I converted the space to an orchard.

The only thing I would say is that it was a small pasture, and maybe that was the reason for the demise? The pasture might have been too small for the cows to thrive. I don't know. But, as I said, it only happened to me a couple of times, and only with cows.

[jnooney]

I had this happen just recently w/ 1.0.6. I had Sheep die off on me three times in three different pastures. The last time I had a field of 3 that were alive for about 5-10 years and then moved them to a huge field and they all died off. I was using MegaMod though, so I don't know if that made a difference.

[ebrumby]

Until recently, I only had an unexplained die-off once. Now it seems like it happens much more frequently - especially when I divide herds. The only explanation I've been given has to do with the aging of animals and it goes like this: when I split a herd, it is possible that the 5 animals going to the new pasture are also the oldest. Unfortunately, the "old" livestock start to die before they can breed and fill the new pasture.

[Grace1957]

This happens to me all the time since 1.6 and I rarely split herds.I've always used 20x20 pastures with 1 herrdsman,but now I use 2 and sometimes they still die.Especially the Fresian cows.And I always buy just 2.I've never had a problem until 1.6.

[SlaveZero]

Bro, 42 chickens died all at the same time, wtf ?