1.5's new animal: Coopmaster or Shepherd?

[I Kinda Fail]

Considering doing an animal focused playthrough with the new auto-petter, figured I'd try out ostriches as well. It's unclear - do they benefit from Coopmaster, Shepherd, both, or neither? Coopmaster states it works for "coop animals", but Wiki claims it helps ostrich incubation time as well. Shepherd says it makes befriending barn animals easier, which is important for ostrich farming due to how their eggs work.

If Coopmaster works for both, then great! But if Shepherd boosts their egg quality, as the game states, that'd be a bit more tricky due to longer incubation time.

It's a shame dinosaurs didn't get a buff, because overall the coop is so much worse then the barn in terms of money-making... Rabbits and dinosaurs only provide ~140g per day, while cows can easily produce over 300 per day.

However, if ostriches DID work under Shepherd, that'd be great for Shepherd, as now the 3 best animals in the game would all be buffed under it. Sheep produce wool faster, pigs find more truffles with higher friendship (I think?) and ostriches lay better eggs.

If Coopmaster buffs ostriches, it'll help you hatch the ostriches faster, but... to take Coopmaster, you'd theoretically have a bunch of chicken coops already... but you need barns for ostriches. Coopmaster's animal product boost doesn't have any effect on chicken or duck eggs... It kinda buffs duck feathers, rabbit feet and void eggs for gifts, and the sell price of duck feathers and rabbit feet, but it doesn't seem to help in terms of processing prices. The only animals that benefit from this particular Coopmaster perk seem to be the ostrich, for getting better eggs to make better mayo, and the rabbit, to get more cloth, but the rabbit with Coopmaster is EXPONENTIALLY worse profit than the sheep. Sheep produce wool daily vs. every 4 days for rabbits. :/ Coops need a buff.

Tl;dr: Which level 10 perk benefits ostrich egg harvests?

[Xpliciit]

I get that Coopmaster might potentially decrease the incubation time but how many Ostriches are you realistically going to be hatching to make that even worthwhile?

Let's assume you will be having 10+ Barns, then you can have 10+ Ostriches incubating at a time anyway. Inevitably they will reach max friendship at some point so I would say Shepherd would generally just be better as you said the Barn animals are better anyway.

[Pixel Peeper]

Interesting idea, but it's going to take a whole lot of time to set up; unlocking Ginger Island, building some barns, finding every single fossil so you can incubate your first ostrich...

Unless the game lies, it should work exactly like it says it does.

Going Rancher + Coopmaster would increase the value of eggs and mayonnaise by 20% and decrease incubation time.

Going Rancher + Shepherd would help you befriend the ostriches faster, would increase the value of eggs and mayonnaise by 20%, and would also increase the likelihood of getting higher-quality eggs.

Going Artisan would increase the value of the mayonnaise by 40%.

I wouldn't recommend Coopmaster, but the other two options seem fine. Hard to say which of the two is better, and Shepherd would probably be better than Artisan if your run doesn't last a very long time.

[Keeper Of Monsters]

Don't forget that you can switch professions, and in a later game 10k that it costs is not that much to worry about.
So the way I see this (not tested, just theory while looking at Tripoteur's post):
- Coopmaster first to get that first egg to hatch faster, maybe even until you get as many ostriches as you like;
- switch to Shepherd to get them all to high hearts faster;
- maybe switching between those two while getting enough birds to fill your barns;
- switch to Artisan when they all are very happy to max profit from mayo in a long run.

[Pixel Peeper]

Ah yes... at release you couldn't reset your professions, but now it's an option.

When playing with large enough amounts of money, changing professions would be a perfectly viable strategy.

[I Kinda Fail]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Interesting idea, but it's going to take a whole lot of time to set up; unlocking Ginger Island, building some barns, finding every single fossil so you can incubate your first ostrich...

Going Rancher + Coopmaster would increase the value of eggs and mayonnaise by 20% and decrease incubation time.

Going Rancher + Shepherd would help you befriend the ostriches faster, would increase the value of eggs and mayonnaise by 20%, and would also increase the likelihood of getting higher-quality eggs.

I was planning on doing an animals only run. That's where the problem lies. I wasn't sure if either perk worked for ostriches, or just one. Basically, I don't want to fill my farm with barns, then find out that ostrich eggs benefit from Coopmaster only. Or I don't want to load up on chicken coops, then find out ostrich eggs benefit from Shepherd, so now I have to pick between the 2 perks.

Ostriches are the only coop animal that really benefits from Coopmaster, money-wise. Gold star chicken eggs are useless, and duck/rabbit goods are really only for gifting. So while the incubation and friendship bit are nice, money-wise, the perk really doesn't help them from what I can tell... I suppose it would encourage more large chicken eggs, but I think that's it.

But if ostriches work with Shepherd, then I'd also get the benefits of sheep producing wool more frequently, PLUS the friendship/mood buff making pigs find more truffles, cows produce larger milk, etc.

By comparison, Coopmaster seems MUCH worse. Only one coop animal produces "large" items, and the rest can't be processed for more money, or have an increased frequency by friendship.