is animal breeding good or bad for pets?

[rpgfreakiod]

i'm mainly asking about dogs breeding. they seem to breed very quickly.

as far as butchering them, i think i read or heard that the meat you get is dependant on species and age, but if i keep the dogs around till they are older they tend to bond with the colonists.

i can't really avoid it unless i get rid of the male that has already bonded. so is there a strategy for pets or should i just kill off the puppies i don't want? i'm afraid if i don't they will easily outnumber the colonists and eat all the meat.

[PolecatEZ]

Most merchants will buy animals, so your puppy farm can sell them off for some easy money.

Now you can even make caravans to take them to market, so every springtime its time to go for a run to the nearest town. In my current game my colonists do a muffalo drive every 2 years or so to cut the herd down.

[rpgfreakiod]

selling bonded animals won't upset the colonists?

[ZephyrNet]

Selling bonded animals does upset colonists, but in my experience the kitties/puppies/etc won't have formed with anyone before getting sold, especially if you don't try to train them.

[Giant Space Hamster]

Selling bonded animals has a negative mood adjustment for bonded colonists just like butchering the animal. I think it's even the same penalty amount but don't recall offhand.

I've noticed that different animals bond at different rates. In my current game I have approximately 8 pigs and 8 dogs. All 8 dogs bonded very quickly but only one pig has bonded. Note that all of both types are being actively trained, so it's not that I am only spending time with the dogs.

Aside from that, pets are excellent haulers. I always try to keep ~8-10 haul-trained animals around in each colony. Anything beyond that I either slaughter or sell depending on needs.

Selling baby animals doesn't get you as much money, but reduces the odds that the animal will bond before being sold.

[ZephyrNet]

Zone restrictions can help keep animals from getting bonded. They can also help keep animals from breeding (keep boys and girls in separate zones that don't overlap). Animals sometimes ignored zones in my A15 game, but I haven't seen that yet in A16.

Worst case - zone it so your colonists basically don't interact with the animals so there won't be any opportunities to form bonds. Keep the animals in a separate room. Colonists can go into the first tile in the room, which will be the food (Hay / Kibble / Pemmican) stockpile. The animals are zoned to stay in that room. They don't care about an ugly environment, don't care about light, etc. (note, I called this a worst case, you generally don't have to go this extreme, and no, I'm not a monster, stop looking at me that way).

Kibble can be made from Hay and meat (esp insect meat if you have it around) which should help you stretch the meat stocks further. Overall though, breeding to sell is going to lose you money, as you have to feed them until you sell them.

No matter what, zone it so those damn dogs can't go into your food cooler. Make a slightly lower priority zone outside of the cooler if you want dogs hauling food (crops especially) but nothing is more annoying than a dog going to town on a Lavish Meal.

[Giant Space Hamster]

Originally posted by JJ:

but nothing is more annoying than a dog going to town on a Lavish Meal.

Except a colonist taking a lavish meal over to a dog and feeding it to the dog when there is kibble in the same room as the dog. <sadface>

[ZephyrNet]

Yeah, that bugs me, when handlers carry around corn or raw meat to train with when there's a stock of kibble around. Especially when that jerk doesn't do Cleaning, and someone else has to clean up the dog vomit (yum).

[rpgfreakiod]

thanks for the suggestions. i never thought of trying to seperate the genders.
it is annoying that you can't set the animals to eat kibble, like how you can set the type of medicine to use or set to not give prisoners food.

also i agree that having dogs for haulers is very useful since the colonists tend to ignore hauling.
it would be nice if you could neuter pets, i mean we can replace body parts and even harvest organs, seems like neutering would be fairly simple.

[Astasia]

They only bond while training. You can keep them around as long as you want in any part of the base you want as long as you aren't trying to train them. Sell/butcher them when they grow enough to be worth it.

[ZephyrNet]

Animals can bond without training. Any animal that nuzzles someone creates a bond with that person unless they're already bonded. Might be there's a % chance on nuzzle to create a bond, not sure, but definitely have seen it happen.

Hauler animals are a real mixed bag for me. Sometimes they're awesome, sometimes they wander for hours and hours when there's something that needs hauling. Just was playing where my huskies were hauling rice from the just-outside fields to a zone right outside the cooler, but wouldn't haul the wood that was a few tiles further.

[Grishnerf]

Originally posted by JJ:

Animals can bond without training. Any animal that nuzzles someone creates a bond with that person unless they're already bonded.

no, nuzzling just gives them a name.
you can have untrained animals (chickens etc) with names cause of this.
see here, some named animals but all have no bonds. and i never get any bonds.

no bonds 

A Screenshot of RimWorld

By: Grishnerf

[rpgfreakiod]

so not training the animals makes it so they won't bond? or atleast lowers the chance of a bond.

also i just discovered something of interest, animals in convoys can become pregnant. this surprised me. it doesn't seem to have an effect on the convoy. though i do worry what this could mean for a long trip.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by rpgfreakiod:

so not training the animals makes it so they won't bond?

Correct. There is no chance whatsoever of a bond forming from anything but training, so if you never train anything you will never get bonds. This is how you seperate "livestock" from "pets."

[Giant Space Hamster]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by rpgfreakiod:

so not training the animals makes it so they won't bond?

Correct. There is no chance whatsoever of a bond forming from anything but training, so if you never train anything you will never get bonds. This is how you seperate "livestock" from "pets."

No no no this is INCORRECT. Sorry for the emphasis, but it's been said incorrectly multiple times.

Animals absolutely CAN bond from nuzzling with no training, I have seen it happen more than once, in A16 too.

[Grishnerf]

Originally posted by Giant Space Hamster:

No no no this is INCORRECT. Sorry for the emphasis, but it's been said incorrectly multiple times.

Animals absolutely CAN bond from nuzzling with no training, I have seen it happen more than once, in A16 too.

then maybe only some specific animals like cats or rabbit.
never had that happen with alpacas, boars, muffalos, cows and chickens or dogs.
thats the animals i always go for.
i always train my dogs (labradors or huskies), so they get bonded anyways.
i cant tell then exactly.
but never ever bonded any of my livestock animals. ever. in a16 and before.