Keeping animals in separate pens

[hardy_conrad]

I've read that a good way to keep livestock populations under control is having the males and females in different pens. Logical! So I gave it a try and immediately all my pawns start sticking the males and females in the new pen together. So much for that. I'm not seeing any kind of manual way to adjust things, the whole zone business not applying to critters blocked by fences after all. Is it not possible in vanilla? Do I need a mod or dlc? Or, entirely possible, am I missing something obvious?

[Greb]

I did it before, but I can't remember how I did it. Just build two pens and there should be a way to assign animals, I think it's like a stockpile? Maybe try clicking on the pen marker, maybe you can open a menu where you pick from a big list of animals that are allowed in the pen, and there should be a tickable option for "allow males" and "allow females" somewhere.

At least that's how it worked when I did it a few months ago, anyway. I think.

[hardy_conrad]

Thanks, I'll keep experimenting. For now I disabled handling entirely after separating my ducks since I don't need it to grab the eggs. There's still a couple yaks I need to milk though.

[Wantoomany]

Pens can have more then one marker. So you can have one marker set up to restrict the type of animal and a second to restrict the gender.

[Steelfleece]

I generally use three markers in two pens. Larger pen has two markers: one with all animals aside from those that will be divided, and a second with females only of those animals that will be (males X'd). The smaller pen has males only of those species that will be divided (females X'd)

[hardy_conrad]

Ah, so I need to fiddle around with the markers then? I've been looking for some kind of setting in the animal and / or zone tab so far. Always new stuff to learn. Strictly speaking it's debatable just how worthwhile the whole animal business even is, heh.

[Greb]

Yeah I never liked managing animals much myself either, really. I do know that cows and chickens are pretty much unlimited food sources with surprisingly high efficiency if you turn them into things like nutrient paste or baby food, though. Also fun to farm guinea pigs because they nuzzle your colonists like mad and their hide is the warmest in the game I think?

And Boomalopes from what I understand can pretty much 1:1 power a Chemfuel Generator on their own, granted I never witnessed this myself but my friend talked about how he had a bunch of small pens around his base each with a single Boomalope in it near the Chemfuel Generator that was powering that specific part of the base, almost like an organic power plant or something, and his base ran fine, more controllable and reliable than Solar, Wind, Geothermal or even Toxifiers, he said.

But yeah I don't like ranching much. I like pets, ones that don't require an actual pen to control that is, it's always fun to collect as many as you can, but actual ranching gives me a headache, lol. I draw the line at horses, if I'm not playing Mechanitor using the Logistics Mechanoid mod anyway. Last time I did any serious ranching all of my livestock got wrecked by toxic fallout and got cancer and dementia, that sucked.

Anyway, hope your ranching and animal husbandry experience is a good one, at least maybe better than my one, lol

[hardy_conrad]

Finally figured it out, I'm just blind. Never realized that clicking on the pen marker opens a little box with new tabs in the bottom left. Thanks for all the help of course!