My Farm Has Too Many Animals; What to Do?

[joe.m.klunder]

Hi Everyone,

My farm is huge. I have hundreds of ducks, turkeys, etc.

I am always running out of grown haygrass.

Any intelligent way to get rid of thousands of animals that keep breeding?

1. I try to sell them to any traders that come.

2. I consider killing hundreds of my ducks to eat, but then what?

3. I always try to keep at least five females, and two males, of every group. Then, they can grow more.

4. Is this "mixed blessing" normal?

Animals breed fairly easily and seem to grow on themselves. But, after awhile, simply growing enough hay grass takes away most of my waking manpower.

[Astasia]

Open the animals tab and click the auto-slaughter button, set the max number of animals you want to maintain.

[Shaboopy-Nubbins]

Yeah time to cull the herd for some extra meat storage & sterilization for the rest you want to keep around. Ducks especially breed like crazy & can eat you out of house and home rather quickly.
Either that or let some go in the wild to fend for themselves (away from your haygrass).

[screamingcrane]

Set auto-slaughter on adult males and females by the number you want to have, and/or start a hay farm and make a hay stock zone in the pen.

[Latex Santa]

I kill off the excess and make them into meals / genoframes or genetic material (Vanilla Genetics Expanded). I've recently started buying, keeping and breeding chickens specifically for this purpose, although rats could be better, I suppose.

I also have never come to the point where I have HUNDREDS of tame animals in the same colony. Up to a hundred total? Sure. Over a hundred, one time? Certainly. HUNDREDS? Never. Kills my fps.

[null]

I really like this mod for kibble https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1715402900

[hardy_conrad]

The colony belongs to the turkeys now...

[pmutzu]

egg laying animals are better off just being female. i typically only include a male when i want to produce more egg laying females. then sett my freezer to house them and use them for cooking . this way with no males you just have a continuous egg laying resource that will only increase when you add a male to fertilize them.

[DreamFree]

Gift them to other factions alive or butchered?

[JTG42]

My current game is in a temperate forrest with lots of rich soil. i began with some horses and then tamed a couple of more. later I tamed 5-6 muffalo. Had cougars wander in and join then german shepards and a wolf self tamed so i got him/her a mate.
fast forward and I have to regularly sell of puppies for good profit, kill muffalo to thin the herd. Oh I forgot about the ibex, had to kill the entire herd off I had so many. Needless to say I wont run out of meat anytime soon. The veggies gardens are always growing (year round growing) so i am golden on food
Be selective on who you butcher using the genetics tab. I cull all below "x%" to improve the gene lines.

Animals you should have
Horses for carvans and meat
Muffalo for meat blue fur and wool
timber wolves- high trainabilty and breed faster than german shepards
Pigs for meat
Mega sloths if they wander in, but otherwise not worth the hassle
Alpaca for wool milk and meat
yaks for milk

[Dis Lexic]

When I have animals, I always set up an autoslaughter. It keeps a steady flow of meat and hides into my stockpile and makes feeding them easier.

[lumina]

Autoslaughter for farm animals. I usually make a huge pen of horses outside my base that I let breed until they start starving, and just let them starve at that point... I use them to sell and travel around the map with, so occasionally take most of them and go visit the surrounding colonies. Doesn't seem to hurt to let them just not eat. Some will die of starvation and you can eat them. Then more will come and you repeat that cycle.

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by null:

I really like this mod for kibble https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1715402900

At that point feels like you may as well use dev mode to spawn stacks of it. Not that I object to cheating, mind you.

[Laurie]

You could make a smaller pen, and put 2 or 3 males in it and kill the rest. Then put them in with the females whenever you want to breed. That's what we do in real life.

[The Yeen Queen]

As others have said, set up auto slaughter rules under the animals tab. With chickens, I honestly usually only keep 1 adult male and 2 females with how fast they breed. Might go to 3 females for a bigger colony, but I don't see a need for more than 1 adult male.

[Storm]

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

As others have said, set up auto slaughter rules under the animals tab. With chickens, I honestly usually only keep 1 adult male and 2 females with how fast they breed. Might go to 3 females for a bigger colony, but I don't see a need for more than 1 adult male.

Except for the Peltskin Octogon that keeps drop jumping into my farm and killing it.

I have auto slaughter set to 2 2 2 2 and it's still too many animal types so now I need to pick which ones I really need.