How many animals per handler is manageable?

[Red Earth]

I've had an issue where I've let my animals overpopulate past their usefulness. Yes, my horses and dogs haul stuff so colonists don't have to, but eventually all that time saved hauling is spent training them, growing haygrass, hunting for meat to make kibble, making kibble. Plus, I once watched a colonist chase a horse for a full work day trying to train up its hauling skill while it was hauling berries from out in the wilderness. Humerous, but inefficient. I set handlers schedule to have them working when animals wake up in the morning so they can catch them before the scatter, but again, there's just too many. There's profit in breeding, but the margins can shrink fast if you don't... end their upkeep in a timely manner.

Making the exodus to a landed ship in a biome will less grass does force a purge, but I'd like to moderate things before that. A cold heart that can kill smart animals and babies would surely come in handy, but I don't have that. I've put bonded animals in sarcophagus rather than butchering.
Some math directing my population control would help.

[Bruchmueller]

I am here to see the answer but you are clearly a warm hearted person, i butcher my animals after they died

[Cat®]

The hard mathematical answer is probably going to be modulated by a lot of environmental factors such as map layout, pawn stats vs animal stat, map size, purpose of the animal, etc.

But what I would put to consideration is that once an animal is trained, maintenance training comes relatively rarely. The number of animals and their wildness will affect this, and make it seem like an eternal task; but at some point all your animals will be "maintenanced" if your handlers are prioritising handling over other tasks.

So with all that context behind us I'd say 20 animals per handler, presuming that handler is fit to work. But if you have 20 animals or less I'd keep two just to keep it all going smoothly. I'd probbly say 1 handler for each 20 animals, +1 handler; 6 handlers should pretty easily maintain 100 animals if you keep them all in one spot and schedule appropriately. But I'd say the biggest wrench in the plans there is the wildness stat. Keeping 20 megasloths on hauling duty is way harder than 20 labradors, obviously, so organising appropriately will change if that 1:20 ratio is easily maintained or not.

But, I'd also say that animal handling is not something where you try to get more handlers to handle all your animals, rather you just fill up your capacity for animals based on how many the handlers can manage. On a fairly large map you don't need more than 30 animal haulers. Even a large mountain base can pretty easily sustain itself on just 5-10 internal haulers.

So I'd say never train unnecessarily. Keep rescue to a few dedicated fast animals, keep hauling only to enough to let the load off your pawns and not more; and if you then have a ton of animals left: reduce the population. Slaughter, sell, meat shields; whatever. Having 100 horses that all haul and rescue isn't going to be that much more efficient than 25, but they will still eat and fart 4 times what 25 will. That's 75 animals that can be cut from your colony for almost no cost.

So, again, I'd say you only train an animal to do what it is suitable for. Elephants, bears, megasloths; these are fine combat animals. So you don't need to train your husky to fight too. Horses, dogs, elephants, donkeys; they're all fine hauling animals so if you also have a bunch of alpacas you might as well leave them grazing and let them work on the wool.

Finally, an animal that serves multiple purposes means you need less animals overall. If you have several animals that can do all your hauling and fighting by themselves, then you don't also need hauling foxes, fighting panthers, suicide tortoises, fighting ibex, rescue pigs, etc.

So, uh, TL;DR:
It depends on what you got, and preferably keep what you got sleek and optimised because any effort spent taming is effort not spent crafting, building, and farming.

I also recommend some animal handling mods to avoid the endless screams of baby goats dying. This one is currently serving me well, because 10 cows is endless food, 40 cows is endless murder.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1501449584&searchtext=neuter

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Red Earth:

...
Some math directing my population control would help.

A good overview vid with maths and a link to a spreadsheet, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQU0pxxHZXM

But...

The most overwhelming takeaway from any "How many animals" thread is going to be "Animal Husbandry is not a stable or reasonably balanced part of Rimworld gameplay." :)

For the vanilla game:

It's fine to have a few animals, here and there. IMO, the most highly desirable animals in general are multiple-resource producers... or used to be. :/ I don't think there are milk/wool animals in-game any longer. (y/n?) So, yaks and alpacas are probably good choices for resource/pack-animal dual-use functions. (I make it a point to try to get alpacas, solely due to fur and early-game pack-animal needs.)

I wouldn't recommend attempting to farm animals for meat requirements. Eggs are a bit better bet, there, but you've still got a lot of work to do in keeping animals fed if they can't graze.

Clothing - The absolute most important thing one can focus on in regards to animals is as fur/wool generators. Getting fur/wool clothing manufacturing up-and-running well by mid-game is a very high priority. The training, alone, without having to dedicate a bunch of effort to Cotton will pay for itself in the long-run. This is what I first focus on in regards to Animal Husbandry. (If one is Devilstrand-capable, one's priorities could shift a tiny bit, but wool is just so darn good...)

A stack of Wool does not have to be continually fed. Long-grass is free. That means Wool is... a free renewable resource until something breaks down and you end up having to "feed it" or it dies. Once something like this starts costing you resources to generate, it becomes very complicated. :)

Grazers - Grazing is, IMO, the primary concern - If you can get grazers and they can graze most of the year, you can likely afford to keep more animals. But, it's unstable - An Event could kill off all the long grass and there goes your herd... Why? Because you haven't been planning on being able to feed them all over a long period of time. So, if you get an event that kills off all the long grass? Slaughter everything but a few young breeders. That's your only reasonable choice for grazers as growing food for and feeding any large number of them just isn't really feasible.

If your animal pop is low enough, you can feed them Meals if necessary. I haven't made kibble in years, literally "real life years"... I just don't bother with dedicating food to doing that. Dumb? No, because I also don't keep as many non-grazer animals as I used to because I know how unstable it can get. :)

I always grow and keep some Haygrass when I get some grazers. But, I don't dedicate more effort to that than getting them through non-grazing periods. If I'm on a map where conditions are harsh, I will of course provide food for a few select types of grazers to use for wool. (Alpaca/Muffalo/etc.) (I don't believe I have ever once had a "cow." Ever. Not even once. :/)

Animal Haulers - Retrievers and Huskies are preferred. They have no wildness and, thus, don't poop in the house. :) I feed them with meals and generally try to keep their population low, maxing out at around 8 or so. (? more/less/depends) I sell off puppies when their population gets too high. (I have used horses/mules? for this in a pinch.)

Release Animals - I don't normally practice that tactic. I will, however, if I happen to get spontaneously tamed animals that are suitable for that. I have tried out "animal army" tactics, just for fun and found I just don't like sending them all out to their deaths. In desperate situations, though, big animals are really good bullet-sponges and end up attracting attention fairly quickly.

Food animals - No. Slaughtering is fine, here and there, but it's better to Hunt if you can. That's the intended mechanic for getting steady Meat other than from Egg layers and Milkers. Milk is great, but isn't as plentiful in Rimworld as it used to be. Eggs... Well -

Egg Layers - Chickens... but, they can quickly get out of control and sooner or later your colony's efforts will likely be entirely devoted to making chickens happy. Any egg-layer can, of course, generate eggs for gourmand/finicky eaters and they're good supplemental bits of meat. BUT - Don't depend on that mechanic for all your meat. Slaughter frequently.

Training - This, along with necessary work to maintain a food supply, is what determines how many Animal Handlers you'll need. Even with something "nuts" like 40-60 animals, I don't think I worried about having more than two handlers, maybe one extra "learning" so they could help out if needed. Out of those three, one might be a "dedicated" Animal Handler that does little else.

But, Animal Handlers generally make the best/safest Hunters, too. (Animal skill) They'll likely be doing some double-duty work in Handling/Hunting jobs. That also means I generally arm them with a bolt-action rifle through most of the game.

Total Number and Work Cost Related to a Sustainable Animal Husbandry Operation That One Should Plan For = Zero. :)

Don't "plan" on actually creating a sustainable animal population to be used for meat or other resources gained through slaughtering. Use the mechanic to get fur/wool and a bit of meat/leather, here and there. Obtain resource-generating grazers, plan on letting the graze and ramp up your feedstocks for them so that you always have a surplus "just in case" of an Event. Slaughtering what you must in hard times means that your game's ability to sustain them is likely going to be impacted by many different types of Events and map-related restrictions.

Your best bet for obtaining meat and hides is going to be "Hunting." You can also buy large quantities of it from General Goods traders. (I always buy some meat from them, even if I don't need it right away.)

PS: I have no real criticism against the mechanics Rimworld has for animal husbandry. It can be fun and can introduce some added gameplay features that are fun to fiddle with. I don't mind that it's very nearly inherently unstable, either. :) There's no wrong way to play, so mods are out there to enable players to create their own "animal farms" if they wish.

[Razor 2.3]

I'm going to suggest you take a look at this mod. At least some of your complaints are addressed among the stuff this mod does.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715565262