My dinosaur has stopped laying eggs

[whitemagus2000]

My dinosaur has stopped laying eggs, and I have no idea why. She currently has 4 1/2 hearts and used to lay an egg a week, but hasn't laid any in about a month. Fortunately, I'm an obsessive hoarder, and still had an egg for the theater bundle, but still, I would like my little dino to do something more than nothing at all. Do I just have to send it to the slaughter house and never pet the next one? Anyone had this issue and find a way to fix it? Thanks

[ChrillBill]

Have you looked to make sure that it is fed properly and that you have a heater installed for winter? I haven't experienced it myself since I always install a heater before buying any animals but I have read that production comes to a stop if they don't have heat during winter.

[Asha Man]

Anything you do to your animals before they have max hearts that stagnates or decreases their friendship will impair production. You only need to do three things to keep them happy and increase friendship -

1) Keep them fed.
2) Pet them at least every other day.
3) Have a heater in Winter.

Of course if you pet them at least once a day it shouldn't take more than a few months to get max friendship, but there is a special machine that makes things easier. The Auto-Petter. There are only two ways to obtain this, either build the Jo Jo Warehouse, or getting it out of a chest in Skull Caverns. Once you have it, your relationship with the animals in the barn you put it will never go down. It will not go up either unless you follow the rules above.

[whitemagus2000]

Nevermind. After another couple weeks, in game, it laid another egg.

[ChrillBill]

Originally posted by Asha Man:

It will not go up either unless you follow the rules above.

Not entirely true. An auto-petter does increase hearts over time as long as you keep the animals fed and warm. It takes longer though. I have tested this several times and animals with zero hearts all went up to five hearts over time with just the auto-petter.

[Asha Man]

Ah, thanks for the info. I never experimented with it, just went by what I read on the wiki.

[Queen Droxxanna]

yes i use the auto petter in all my barns/coops. I also put one in the barn yard, and i often see animals standing beside it to get petted.
if you really want them happy and get more produce,, you need the HUSBANDRY mod and feed them treats. Give your pigs melons and you will get lots of truffles.
The wiki doesn't say what the ostrich's like, but i found they like Kale.
Once your ostrich is at 5 hearts and you have given it a variety of treats, you can enter it into the town animal contest., if you win, you could get eggs twice as often.

I imagine the same is true for dinosaurs, and they love Daffodil and Crocus

[I Kinda Fail]

Did you pet it and/or let it outside?

Personally, I noticed when I stopped letting my void chickens outside for weeks and months on end, I'd stop getting 12 eggs per day... when they're supposed to lay an egg daily, regardless of happiness. I think it's a "hidden" feature to punish people like me who abuse their animals.

[ChrillBill]

Originally posted by Asha Man:

Ah, thanks for the info. I never experimented with it, just went by what I read on the wiki.

Ah yes, the wiki was a bit misleading a while back but I just looked and it has been changed just a few days ago. It now mentions; "However, they will only gain approximately half the normal Friendship points from petting this way".

It is also good to note that friendship points from both the auto-petter and from the player stack, so you can reach 5 hearts faster with both the auto-petter and manual petting.